


So You Think You Can Magic

by Ice_Rain



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Reality Show, Blow Jobs, Competition, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Getting Together, Hand Jobs, Kissing, M/M, Magic Tricks, Pining, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, it's a rom com folks, they're all magicians but the normal kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:27:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 50,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25522825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ice_Rain/pseuds/Ice_Rain
Summary: Stage magic duo Quentin and Julia are contestants in a reality TV competition. Among their opponents are Eliot and Margo, who Quentin is familiar with from his first year at Brakebills, as well as Marina and Pete, who Julia has some bad history with from her time performing street magic. Eliot decides that his best chance at winning the competition is to fake a developing romance with Quentin to gain the audience’s favor. Shenanigans ensue.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater & Julia Wicker, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 160
Kudos: 99





	1. Torn and Restored

**Author's Note:**

> I’m really excited for this! I promise there will be lots of Queliot, but it’s somewhat of a slow burn fic, and I wanted to take some time to set everything up. It’ll all be worth it! A lot of the magic tricks I'll be describing throughout the fic are taken from videos I’ve seen - I’ll include links at the end of each chapter if you want to check them out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter includes a description of a panic attack.

“Thanks so much!” Quentin said to their Lyft driver as he helped him and Julia take their luggage out of the trunk. They’d pulled up just in front of a cottage, where Quentin could see a sign by the door that read “Welcome Centurion Challenge Competitors!” At least they knew they were in the right place.

Quentin was in a surprisingly good mood, and their driver had been friendly, so he decided to have a little fun before he drove off.

“Here, hold out your hand,” he told the driver. Quentin took out a $5 bill and made a grand gesture of placing it into the man’s hand. “Now close your hand around it,” he instructed. The man did as he was told, curious as to what was happening.

“Ok, now I need you to channel your inner Hamilton. I’m gonna need you to sing!” The Hamilton album had been playing in the car their whole drive here, which is what had given Quentin this idea in the first place. Julia laughed, seeing where this was going.

“Alexander Hamilton! My name is Alexander Hamilton!” The Lyft driver sang loud and proud.

“Ok, open your hand. You’ve made him appear!” Quentin exclaimed. The $5 bill had turned into a $10 bill.

“That’s amazing!” The man said, laughing. He started handing the money back to Quentin, but Quentin told him to keep it as a tip. 

“Ooh, classy. They teach Magic Tip Giving 101 at Brakebills?” Julia smirked before turning to pick up her suitcase from the curb. Quentin smiled. It was nice that they could joke like this. Even as recently as a year ago, he and Julia had barely been on speaking terms, and on the rare occasions they’d exchanged texts, Brakebills had been a sore topic.

Brakebills University for the Magical Arts was a 3-year intensive, highly prestigious magic program. A lot of the world’s most well-known magicians had graduated from Brakebills. About five years ago, Quentin had received a handwritten invitation in the mail to audition. Julia had not.

__ _ _ __

_“Q, please. Just tell them about me. If I can just get an audition, I know that I can make it in. Come on Q, we learned everything together, you know what I can do. Please.”_

_“Jules… I can tell them about you, but the auditions are really an invitation-only thing…”_

_“But you’ll tell them about me?” Julia asked, eyes pleading._

_“Yeah, Jules. Sure.”_

_“Thank you thank you thank you!” Julia squealed, wrapping her arms around Quentin’s neck._

__ _ _ __

But Quentin never told Brakebills about Julia. He’d only just gotten in, and he hadn’t wanted to risk losing his spot, or even just giving off a bad first impression. Julia had figured that out pretty quickly, and Quentin hadn’t exactly been kind when confronted about it. Honestly, he’d acted like a snob. As a result, Julia had essentially stopped speaking to him.

At first Quentin had been mad at Julia for abandoning him. And by the time he came to his senses enough to want to apologize to her, it had seemed too late. Julia had moved to another city, and Quentin’s studies were too demanding for him to be able to put in the effort to repair their friendship that Julia deserved. 

Quentin’s time at Brakebills had been intense. They taught all types of magic there – card tricks, coin sleights, stage illusions, escape artistry, mentalism, and more. To graduate, each student had to demonstrate high proficiency in each category, as well as mastery in one specific area of concentration. Quentin had selected card magic as his discipline.

The final requirement for graduation was to invent a new trick. The trick had to fool at least 3/4 of the panel of professors in order for it to count. It took Quentin three tries to devise a trick that was good enough, which was about par for the course. But Quentin couldn’t help but be disappointed in himself. Brakebills’s most successful magicians had all succeeded on their first tries, and the tricks they’d invented for their final exams had helped kickstart their careers. Now, here Quentin was, two years after graduating, with barely anything to show for it besides having performed in a few small gigs.

But now he and Julia were a team, just like the old days, and things were starting to look up. They’d reconnected 6 months ago.

_ _ _ _

_Quentin shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets. It was early April, but in Boston it still felt like winter. Quentin was here for a weeklong stint as an opening act for a not-so-famous stage illusionist. It was his third day here, and he was on his way to Quincy market for lunch. He passed a street performer who’d gathered a pretty large crowd doing some kind of trick involving ropes. He didn’t pay attention at first, but stopped dead in his tracks when he recognized Julia’s voice amplified by a microphone._

_“Ok, for this next trick, I’m going to need a volunteer from the audience!”_

_Julia selected someone who could only be described as an adorable old man. She helped him into a chair, and then sat next to him. She handed him a green piece of paper, keeping a pink one for herself, and started up some music. She performed the rest of the trick without saying anything._

_She first demonstrated folding her paper and cutting it into a heart shape, motioning for the man to do the same. She acted out falling in love, with the man soon catching on and happily following her lead, fanning himself dramatically with his paper heart. The audience was loving this already, laughing fondly at the display._

_With the man following Julia’s lead, they each tore a corner of their heart off, tucking their own corner piece into their shirt pocket. Julia then pretended to be nervous, and offered the man her heart. They traded with each other, both acting excited that the other had accepted the offer._

_Julia then acted out a fight, which the man enthusiastically joined in on, raising his fists into the air. They both ripped up the hearts they were holding, adding their own heart’s corner piece to the mix of papers. Julia was now holding a mostly green ball of ripped-up paper plus her original pink corner, and the man had the opposite – a pink ball plus his original green corner._

_Finally, they traded torn paper balls, acting as if they were making up from their fight. In the final reveal, they both unfolded the papers to reveal two completely intact hearts, one green with a pink corner, and one pink with a green corner. The man looked absolutely dumbfounded._

_Quentin was amazed, not by the trick’s method, but by its impact. Julia had told a beautiful story, without even talking, and had gotten a spectator to play along perfectly._

_Quentin continued to be amazed for the rest of the show. Julia’s tricks were, for the most part, based on fairly standard magic staples. But every time Quentin thought he knew where a trick was going, he kept finding himself surprised by an unexpected twist or beautiful storyline. Julia’s energy performing was magnetic, and Quentin couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous. Despite all his classical training and well-practiced skill, Julia had a creative quality to her performances that Quentin just… didn’t have._

_Quentin had been standing far back in the crowd, but once Julia had finished and was starting to pack up, Quentin approached her._

_“That was amazing, Jules,” he said. Julia jumped upon hearing his voice, and looked at him with an unreadable expression, not saying anything._

_Quentin fumbled around in his pocket, taking out a piece of paper he’d prepared during Julia’s last act, and showed it to her. It said “Friendship” written in black ink._

_“Um, so I know that this is what I did to us,” Quentin said, and he started tearing the paper into little pieces and crushing them into a ball. “But I’m hoping that it’s possible to repair,” he finished, handing the crumpled ball of paper over to Julia. She slowly unfolded it to reveal the original paper saying “Friendship” completely intact. Her face softened and she gave Quentin a real smile._

_“Q, that was so cheesy.” But she was still smiling. “Do you maybe want to get lunch?” She asked. Quentin let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding._

_“Yeah, that would be really nice.”_

__ _ _ __

While the Centurion Challenge was a respected competition in the magic community, it was still a reality TV competition show. Quentin had seen every episode of the previous two seasons, and knew well enough that the cameras didn’t just care about everyone’s magic abilities, but were looking for drama between contestants and interesting backstories. As much as Quentin hated to admit it, his and Julia’s past was likely what had gotten them a spot on the show, not just their skills. Housing everyone together in this cottage was another way to encourage interaction between the contestants. 

They entered into the living room to see a dozen or so contestants already there, mingling. They saw some luggage in a side room, and went to add theirs to the pile.

“Well look who it is,” a woman dressed in tight, black clothes approached them as soon as they returned to the living room

“Marina,” Julia said, her face losing all trace of the smile she’d just had.

“Looks like they’ll let anyone into this thing,” Marina said, sneering.

“Funny, I was about to say the same thing,” Julia shot back. Well, there was some kind of story here Quentin was certainly missing. He felt like he had to do something to fill the awkward silence.

“Uh, hi, I’m Quentin.”

Marina glanced at him for a moment without turning her head, looking unimpressed, then brought her eyes back to Julia.

“Well, I’d better get back to Pete,” she said. Julia’s eyes widened.

“Seriously, Pete’s here too? Why am I even surprised,” Julia muttered. 

“Well, lovely as this has been,” and without finishing the thought, Marina smiled sweetly and walked away toward a blonde-haired man on the other side of the room.

And that’s when Quentin saw a man he recognized immediately, standing across the room closely examining the bar. His heartrate started to increase. Hazel eyes with just a touch of eyeliner, faint stubble, dark gray vest with a purple tie, long legs, and curly hair falling perfectly over his forehead – Quentin suspected he arranged it like that on purpose, to make it look just the perfect amount of messy. Eliot Waugh.

Quentin had encountered Eliot only a handful of times during his first year at Brakebills. Eliot had been in his third year when Quentin had started school there, and he and his best friend Margo were something of social legends. People talked about them even by the time Quentin was graduating. To Quentin, they had always seemed untouchable, too far above Quentin’s social status to ever even talk to, much less become friends with. And now Eliot was here. Quentin gulped, momentarily forgetting the drama he’d just witnessed between Marina and Julia. He quickly came back to himself.

“So uh, what was that about?” Quentin asked. Julia sighed.

“I’ll tell you the whole story later, but sufficed to say, those two are Bad News. We used to perform together. They stole of bunch of my tricks and basically ran me out of New York City.”

“Holy shit Jules, what the fuck, that’s awful.”

“Yeah,” Julia replied. “They are.” Julia then saw someone across the room and looked relieved. “Oh, I know someone over there, I’m gonna go say hi real quick.” She squeezed Quentin’s shoulder in reassurance, knowing he wasn’t the most confident when left alone in social situations, and walked off towards a woman wearing her hair in a ponytail.

Just then, a stunningly beautiful woman with dark hair approached Quentin. He recognized her right away as Margo. He’d never really been sure what her and Eliot’s relationship was, as it seemed to go beyond friends in some way. They’d been practically attached at the hip at Brakebills. Quentin had rarely seen one of them without the other. But Eliot was known for hooking up with plenty of guys at Brakebills, so whatever he and Margo were, it didn’t seem like a typical relationship.

“I’m Margo,” she said, giving Quentin a once-over with her eyes. They’d met before, but only briefly, and that had been several years ago, so Quentin wasn’t really offended for not being remembered. Just as he was about to introduce himself, Eliot emerged from behind Margo and spoke.

“Quentin Coldwater, nice to see you again,” Eliot said, sticking out his hand. It took Quentin a minute to register what was happening and reach out to shake it. How did Eliot remember him? They’d never spent any significant amount of time together. Well, for the most part. And they’d only overlapped for the one year. 

“Eliot, um, it’s uh. Yeah, good to see you too,” he said. Margo glanced at Eliot, then back at Quentin, pursing her lips and raising an eyebrow. Quentin noticed he was still gripping Eliot’s hand for what had definitely been longer than a typical polite handshake. Quentin let go instantly at the realization, pulling his hand away like he’d touched a hot pan. 

“And how do you two know each other?” Margo asked.

“Brakebills, Bambi,” Eliot cooed, turning to face Margo and rubbing her shoulders.

“Uh, yeah, Eliot’s the one who took me to my audition room. He um, also gave me a tour my first day.” _Oh my God, stop talking,_ Quentin thought. He didn’t want to sound creepy, like he remembered each and every encounter he’d ever had with Eliot. Which, to be honest, he definitely did. Eliot carried himself with a sort of easy grace that was positively magnetic, yet intimidating at the same time. It always left Quentin in a confused mess of both wanting to be around Eliot for as long as possible, and also wanting to run away so he couldn’t embarrass himself. 

“Did he, now?” Margo asked, looking back at Eliot. “Hmm,” she shrugged, and started walking off. Eliot followed her, and Margo said something to him Quentin couldn’t quite hear. Eliot then glanced back behind him, meeting Quentin’s eyes. Shit, now Eliot thought Quentin had been staring at him. Which he definitely had been doing. Quentin quickly went to find Julia.

“Oh, Q, this is Fen. We met back when I was doing street magic. You _have_ to see her knife routines, they’re incredible.”

“Aww, stop,” Fen giggled. Quentin could instantly tell she had a very bubbly personality. It was pretty refreshing, honestly, after all the intense introductions Quentin had been a part of today.

“Alright everyone, it’s time to get you all settled in!” A female voice with a British accent announced from the doorway. Quentin looked and immediately recognized her as Jane Chatwin, the host of the show. Next to her was a man carrying a camera and some other equipment.

“My name is Jane, it’s a pleasure to meet you all. And this is our camera man, Todd.” Todd gave a little wave, and in doing so dropped one of the many items he was carrying. Jane rolled her eyes as he bent down to pick it up.

“Just as a reminder, there are cameras setup all throughout the cottage, except in the bedrooms and bathrooms. You can have privacy, of course, but we’d prefer you to spend as much time in public spaces as possible. This is a tv show after all. I’ll be doing some introductory interviews with each pair of you, to get your initial impressions. Let’s start with,” she looked down at a piece of paper, “Josh and Fen.”

“Ooh, that’s me!” Fen said, clapping her hands together. She and a man Quentin hadn’t yet met followed Jane and Todd to another room.

Quentin tried his best to make small talk with the other contestants while they waited for his turn. Quentin wasn’t great in front of cameras, but he was committed to doing his best. He and Julia had already done an interview when they were first cast where they talked about their general backstory. Julia had done most of the talking, explaining how she and Quentin were childhood friends, Quentin had gone to Brakebills while Julia had learned street magic, and how they’d recently reunited to form a well-balanced team with each of their unique skillsets. Quentin was curious how much Julia was going to say about Marina to the camera when it was their turn.

Eliot and Margo were called on next. The longer it took to be their turn, the more nervous Quentin was getting. Fortunately, they were third to be interviewed.

“Just take a seat right there,” Jane told them when they entered. “Perfect, just like that. So I know you’ve already had one interview with us, but just as a reminder. Look at me, not the camera, when we’re talking.” Quentin nodded. He remembered that well. His first interview they’d had to redo several takes because Quentin kept forgetting and would stare directly at the camera whenever he spoke.

“Ok, Julia, let’s start with you,” Jane said. “Are there any contestants here that you knew already?”

“Yeah,” Julia said, sitting up straight. “I met Fen a couple years ago. I saw her doing some impressive knife acts, and we’ve kept in touch with each other. She’s great, definitely some steep competition. And then there’s Marina and Pete,” she paused for a second, seeming to consider how to word what she wanted to say. “They were some of the first magicians I ever worked with professionally. We performed street magic together, in a group with a couple other people, for about a year. Let’s just say, we don’t get along very well now.”

“Oh? Interesting, do keep going. This is the kind of thing viewers will love!”

Julia looked away. “Um, I’m not really sure how much I want to say…”

“Julia,” Jane started, sounding reassuring. “Tension between contestants is the type of thing the audience is going to absolutely devour. Remember this competition isn’t just based off what the judges think, it’s also based off of audience votes. Something like this could help keep you in the competition longer.”

Quentin immediately felt more stressed out. The Centurion Challenge eliminated one pair of contestants every week. After each performance episode, the audience would vote for their favorites. The judges would select a bottom three, and the audience vote would determine who was eliminated. The results were announced during a 1-hour reveal episode, padded with performances from famous magicians, along with footage and interviews of the contestants. Competition shows were masters of stretching out information that could be delivered in one sentence into an entire hour.

When three pairs remained, there would be a final performance episode, at which point only the audience vote mattered for selecting the winning magic duo. There were ten pairs to start, so that made a total of eight performance episodes. Eight weeks living in the cottage, if you made it to the end.

Quentin was confident in his magic, but certainly not in his ability to appeal to an audience. He was aware of all that when he agreed to this, but he thought his skills alone could at least be enough to take him pretty far, if he could just avoid ever being in the bottom three. But hearing Jane say all of this out loud was making Quentin start to panic. What if they ended up in the bottom three and the audience hated him? What if it ended up being his fault that they got sent home, just because of his personality? How would that be fair to Julia?

He was interrupted from his thoughts when Julia spoke. “Ok, you’re right.” She took a deep breath. “I’m sure you’ll hear some kind of lie from Marina, but this is what actually happened. We worked together for about a year as street performers. Marina was the leader of the group – they had a pretty strong presence in New York when I joined. But they started to drift away from magic, and more towards hustling. 3-Card Monte, shell games, those sorts of things. I didn’t want to take part in that, so I tried to leave.

“Marina threatened me to stay, she said they’d keep performing all of the magic tricks I’d invented, even sell them to other people without my permission, if I left. But I didn’t want to scam people, so I stuck by my decision and left the group. And she followed through on her threat, stealing all of my tricks. I couldn’t even perform in New York anymore, because everyone assumed _I_ was the one who’d stolen Marina’s tricks, since they were so well-established. So, I left and started working in Boston instead. Marina is going to play dirty during this competition, and I’m going to be ready for it.”

“Thank you for sharing that, Julia,” Jane said, looking pleased. “Ok, Quentin, let’s do you. Is there anyone here you knew before today?”

“Yeah, I guess. I knew Eliot at Brakebills University, he was two years above me. We never really talked much though. I guess I kind of knew Margo, too? Well, we’d met, at least.” God, Quentin sounded so lame. There was no way he could follow up Julia’s story. He really just wasn’t an interesting person, all of these interviews were going to be humiliating. But Jane looked surprisingly interested. Quentin assumed that was just part of her job as interviewer.

“So how did you meet Eliot, exactly?”

“Umm, he was the first person I met at Brakebills, actually. I’d received this mysterious invitation to audition for something, I didn’t even know exactly what it was for. And I’d showed up to the location described, and Eliot was there to take me to my audition room. I was so nervous at the audition. I started by performing a routine I’d perfected over the years, but then they threw me a curveball – one of the professors performed a trick I’d never seen, and they gave me 15 minutes to figure it out and perform the same trick back to them, all while adding my own twist. It was terrifying, but um, also kind of thrilling.”

“Very interesting. And what was your first impression of Eliot?” Jane asked. That kind of seemed like an odd question. Quentin thought they’d want to talk about magic, but Jane was really leaning into this.

“Well, I mean, Eliot seemed, I guess, kind of indifferent to everything? I don’t mean that he was a snob or anything,” he clarified quickly. He did not want to insult anyone on this show, the last thing he and Julia needed was more enemies. “He just, seemed really um, I don’t know, confident I guess. You know, cool and confident.”

“Hmm,” Jane said, nodding her head. “And he took you on a tour of Brakebills when you started school there, right?”

“Wait, what? How do you know that?” Quentin was shocked. 

“I interviewed Eliot right before this. He had quite a bit to say about you.”

“Uh, I uh…” Quentin didn’t know how to process this. What did that _mean_ , exactly? Eliot had probably talked about how lost Quentin looked when they first met, how stupid his questions had been on their tour, how lame his tricks were at the first Magic Night he performed in, which was a monthly sort of open mic night at Brakebills. Quentin had really made a fool of himself there.

“Yeah, he took me on a tour. But um, Eliot was pretty popular there, and he was two years ahead of me so, beyond that, we didn’t really uh, interact. Much.” Quentin could feel his face starting to turn red. He was thinking back to one night in particular, the only other time Quentin had ever been alone with Eliot, at Woof Fountain. He was sure Eliot didn’t remember. He really wanted this line of questioning to be over.

“Great,” Jane said. “Now, what do you both think about the judges this year. Are any of them going to be particularly hard to impress?” Thank God. This, Quentin could talk about happily.

“Well, I’m most excited to perform for Alice Quinn,” Quentin said. “I’ve admired her work for years. I’m mainly a card magician, and, I mean, the moves she’s come up with! It’s a bit harder, you know, for woman in card magic, at least in general, because women’s hands tend to be smaller, and they’re not expected to wear suits with jackets and sleeves on stage like men. Which is honestly, in my opinion, part of the reason there are so few female magicians who do advanced card magic. For so long, magicians’ props and costumes have been tailored to men. But Alice came up with so many moves that can work well for anyone. And I mean the props she’s invented, and her trick decks! They’re just genius.”

Quentin could talk about this stuff for hours. The gender barrier in magic, how it was finally starting to change for the better, how much respect he had for people like Alice Quinn who invented so many unique methods. He was about to keep going, but Jane stopped him there.

“That’s great, Quentin! And what about you Julia?”

“I’m most excited to get feedback from Kady Orloff-Diaz. I really look up to her, because she’s kind of like me. She didn’t get formal training, she started out performing at carnivals, and had to teach herself.”

“And what about Penny Adiyodi?” Jane asked. Quentin considered how to respond. Penny was the closest thing the Centurion Challenge had to Simon Cowell. He was an incredibly impressive performer. He was such a good escape artist he was sometimes called The Traveler. It was like he could teleport out of any location. He was also great at mentalism, able to predict seemingly anything an audience member was thinking of. Quentin usually didn’t like mentalism tricks, since there were only so many ways they could be done, but Penny used a few secrets he’d never released to the broader magic community.

Julia spoke first. “Well, Penny Adiyodi is certainly amazing, but I have to admit, I’m a little nervous about what he’s going to say. I mean, we have seen the show after all, we know he can tear magicians apart,” she laughed. Jane chuckled along with her.

“That was great. Thank you both so much for talking with me. You can go back out into the room while I finish up all the interviews.”

When they went back to the living room, Quentin’s eyes were immediately drawn to Eliot and Margo, standing in the corner, engaged in what appeared to be an intense conversation. As if sensing Quentin’s eyes on them, Eliot turned and stared at Quentin. Quentin stared back, unmoving. Someone walked between them blocking his view, and as soon as they’d passed by, Eliot had turned and was walking away from Margo towards the bar.

“Ok!” Jane announced, coming back into the room after all the interviews were done. Todd followed behind with the camera. Quentin had settled himself on the couch, tired of mingling, idly practicing some simple coin sleights. “We’ve assigned each of you roommates to start out with! It’s a way for you to start to get to know each other a bit better. I’ll read them off.” She pulled out a piece of paper from her back pocket.

“Margo, you’ll be rooming with Ess. We don’t have an equal number of men and women, is that ok with both of you?”

Margo gave Ess an appraising look, the corners of her mouth quirking up slightly. “No, I don’t mind,” she said with exaggerated innocence.

Ess grinned and said, “Nor do I.” Ess was here with a man named Idri as part of a father-son duo. 

“Great! Next, Julia, you’ll be rooming with Marina.”

“What!” Marina and Julia both shouted at the same time.

“No, no no no no no,” Julia said. “You cannot do this, this isn’t fair.”

“Now now,” Jane said. “We thought it would be good for you two to get reacquainted, that’s all.”

“No, you’re doing this on purpose!” Julia shouted.

“I will not room with her, this is completely insane,” Marina yelled. 

Julia turned to face the camera Todd was holding. “This is the one time you’ll see the two of us agreeing on anything, so yeah, better get it on film.” Wow, Quentin had never seen Julia like this. Julia, who was usually so composed, so well-spoken. Julia, who had been Quentin’s voice of reason for most of his life.

“I’m afraid these rooming assignments are final,” Jane said, with what was clearly fake sympathy. “Now, moving on.” Julia kept grumbling next to Quentin. He squeezed her shoulder in support, but didn’t say anything for fear of missing the assignments.

“Pete, you’ll be with Humbledrum.” Pete didn’t look too happy with his assignment, either. Humbledrum was a strange character. This show liked to have a few oddball contestants for entertainment purposes. Humbledrum was his stage name, although Quentin wasn’t sure what his real name was. He wouldn’t be surprised if he’d changed it legally to the mononym Humbledrum. Quentin had never spoken to him, at least not before briefly meeting him today, but he knew of him. He always performed dressed as a bear. He was a comedy magician, but the comedy largely came from the fact that he took himself extremely seriously in his role. He always performed with his partner, Fray.

“Idri, you’re with Sebastian. Josh, you’re with Benedict. Poppy and Zelda, you’re together. Harriet is with Arielle.”

Oh dear. Quentin looked around nervously. There were only three remaining men – Tick, someone who’s name he couldn’t quite remember – Luke? Link? – and Eliot. Jane continued reading.

“Fray, you’ll be with Fen. Tick is with Lunk. And Quentin, you’re with Eliot.”

And, yup, there it was. Having seen people’s reactions to their roommates, not even just Julia and Marina, Quentin could tell there was definitely a rationale behind these assignments. It made Quentin that much more curious about what Eliot had said about him during his interview.

“Alright, that’s everyone. Now, upstairs with you all, time to get settled in!” Jane chirped.

Quentin lagged behind while there was a mad dash for the room holding everyone’s luggage. He wasn’t feeling any particular rush to be alone in a room with Eliot. He was trying his best not to think about the fact that they’d be sleeping near each other, they’d be changing in that room, there were things they could accidentally walk in on each other doing… Nope, nope nope, Quentin was not going to let himself go there. Quentin watched Eliot go up the stairs. He took a deep breath, grabbed his suitcase, and climbed up to his room.

When he walked in, Eliot was already carefully hanging up his clothes in the larger of the two closets.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, not turning around, “about the closet. I just brought _a lot_ of clothes, and I kind of figured you wouldn’t have that many.” He turned then to look at Quentin, who was still standing in the doorway. “But if it’s a problem we could share the total closet space, of course.”

“Um, no I don’t, uh, I don’t mind.” Quentin plopped his suitcase gracelessly onto the bed Eliot had left for him. The beds were next to each other, a few feet apart. Quentin’s was closer to the door, and Eliot’s was closer to the bathroom they shared. Eliot nodded and went back to unpacking. The silence felt awkward to Quentin, but he didn’t really have anything to say. He started putting his clothes into the dresser.

A few minutes passed before Eliot spoke. “I don’t know if you heard, we’re gonna have a party downstairs tonight. Should be interesting. You coming?”

“Um, I’m not really a party kind of person. Besides, I should, uh, probably practice. Our first performances are just two days away, after all.”

Eliot walked over to Quentin, getting just slightly closer than Quentin was comfortable with for someone he barely knew.

“Come on, Quentin, it’s our first night here. They specifically made the first performance two days from now so we could all party tonight and not be hung over for it. Besides, is another night of practicing your own routine really more valuable than a night talking to people with different magic backgrounds? You might learn something.”

Quentin had to admit he had a point, but Quentin was never very good at that type of networking anyway. He was usually either too shy to bring up what he actually wanted to talk about, or he’d start babbling about it so much that the other person would come up with an excuse to leave the conversation.

“It’ll be fun,” Eliot ran his hand lightly over Quentin’s arm and batted his eyelashes. Quentin’s brain stopped working for a second, and before he registered what his own mouth was doing, he was saying, “Ok, fine, I’ll go.”

“Excellent!” Eliot said, spinning around with a flair and walking over to his closet. He seemed deep in thought, then pulled out two vests that looked identical not only to each other, but also to the one he was currently wearing. “Which one should I wear?”

“Uhhh, is this a trick question?” Eliot let his face fall dramatically.

“Oh, Quentin. I can see that you are going to be completely useless to me. Fine, I’ll get Margo’s opinion instead.” And with that, Eliot and his many vests exited the room.

Quentin sat on his bed, trying to calm himself down. This was fine. Everything was fine. He was going to a party, with a bunch of people he barely knew, Julia’s arch nemesis, and his roommate who he was extremely attracted to. Living in a house where he was filmed every second of every day. And about to compete in probably the most important event of his life, where he’d be judged by people all over the country. No cause for alarm.

He started feeling a panic attack coming and was extremely glad Eliot was out of the room right now. He could not let him see him like this. Fuck, what if he kept having panic attacks throughout the whole competition and Eliot saw him and made fun of him? What if he had a panic attack before a performance? He thought he’d gotten control over this, he hadn’t had an issue performing in so long, but what if this was too much and he’d end up humiliating himself in front of the entire country?

He heard Eliot’s voice in the hallway, and ran into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him and collapsing back against it, sliding to the floor. He did his best to keep the crying quiet. He just had to wait this out. He would be fine. It didn’t feel like it now, but he knew logically that he would be fine, that he’d eventually get his breathing under control, that he’d eventually be able to stop crying. He did his best to focus on his breathing.

“Quentin?” Eliot knocked softly at the door. It had probably been about ten minutes. Quentin was finally starting to calm down, but he knew he must look like a wreck. “Umm, not to rush you or anything,” Eliot continued, “but I was just wondering if you were going to be done soon? Otherwise, I can use Margo’s bathroom, it’s just, I have some stuff in there I was going to use…”

Shit, he didn’t need to be known as the roommate who hogged the bathroom for obscene amounts of time.

“Yeah, sorry, just a second,” Quentin said. He stood up to look in the mirror. He looked worse than he’d thought, his eyes were puffy and his whole face was red. He rinsed off his face in the sink and patted it dry with a towel. It didn’t look much better. He hid his face as best as he could behind his hair and quickly walked out of the bathroom, looking away from Eliot. He thought he’d gotten away with it, but Eliot grabbed his wrist.

“Are you ok?” Eliot asked, trying to get a better look at Quentin.

“Uh, yeah, no I’m fine, I’m just gonna go, uh, talk to Julia.” He wasn’t meeting Eliot’s eyes, but he couldn’t completely hide his face at this angle.

Eliot was silent for a moment, then let go of his wrist. “Ok, sure,” he said softly. Quentin was almost out the door when Eliot spoke again. “If you ever need someone to talk to… I know Julia’s the obvious choice but, we are going to be roommates for a while. Well, I hope, at least.” He changed his tone, “I swear to God, if one of us gets eliminated before that stupid bear…” That made Quentin laugh, and he allowed himself to finally look at Eliot. “Anyway,” Eliot continued, “I know we don’t know each other well, but I’m happy to talk, anytime.”

“Thanks,” Quentin said, not sure what else to say. Eliot seemed really genuine about his offer. Even though Quentin knew he looked like a mess, he wasn’t even feeling embarrassed about it anymore. Quentin still wanted to see Julia, so he gave Eliot a small smile and walked out into the hallway. Julia could probably use Quentin’s support just as much as he needed hers, if the shouts coming from her room were anything to go by. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Julia's torn and restored heart trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG_QLGXsDhw
> 
> All the magic duos:
> 
> Quentin and Julia  
> Eliot and Margo  
> Josh and Fen  
> Marina and Pete  
> Tick and Benedict  
> Poppy and Sebastian  
> Idri and Ess  
> Ariel and Lunk  
> Harriet and Zelda  
> Fray and Humbledrum


	2. Joy

Not wanting to be one to go back on his word, Quentin did attend the party, although he stayed for less than an hour. He stuck by Julia the whole time, letting her do most of the talking. They spent almost all of their time with Fen and Josh, who Quentin could actually see himself becoming friends with. They seemed like pretty easygoing people. Quentin did have a brief conversation with Arielle, but it was cut short when she had to go stop a very intoxicated Lunk from hurting himself trying to do a keg stand.

Throughout the party, Quentin kept finding his eyes drifting over to Eliot. He was so confident in this setting, making drinks with a flourish, engaging everyone in conversation, and dancing without a care in the world. Quentin could see why he and Margo had been so popular at Brakebills. They were already dominating the social scene here and it was just the first day.

“So then, he spits out the milk! He’d been keeping it in his mouth the entire time!” Josh was going on about a silly milk and cookies magic trick he wanted to recreate. Quentin took the opportunity to sneak another glance at Eliot. Only this time, his eyes met Eliot’s staring back at him. Quentin was so startled he immediately turned his whole body away, as if making a huge sudden motion wouldn’t just draw more attention to the fact that Eliot had caught him staring.

“You good?” Julia asked him, a small smile playing on her lips.

“Yeah, fine. I think, uh, I’m gonna turn in for the night actually.”

_ _ _ _

Quentin woke up before Eliot the next day, which wasn’t surprising considering how much Eliot had been drinking even in just the short time Quentin had been at the party. Not that he’d been paying super close attention to Eliot the whole night, of course.

Quentin tried to get ready for the day as quietly as possible, but it backfired spectacularly. He didn’t want to make too much noise walking around on the creaky floorboards, so he tried reaching for his wallet on the nightstand between his and Eliot’s beds while standing several feet away. In doing so, he lost his balance and knocked basically every item off the surface with a loud crash. Fuck.

“Mmmfff,” Eliot grumbled into his pillow at the sound. He grabbed another pillow from the floor and shoved it on top of his head, rearranging himself to get comfortable. He squeezed his eyes shut tight with an adorable pout on his lips from the unwelcome wake-up. His curls were falling all over the place, peeking out between the two pillows that his head was now sandwiched between. It was weird seeing Eliot so disheveled like this. He was always so perfectly groomed, not a tie, collar, or hair out of place.

Just then, Eliot opened his eyes and saw Quentin staring right at him. Shit. It was totally normal to watch your roommate sleep, right? Quentin quickly looked away, mumbling an apology about all the noise as he retreated into the bathroom. When he came out, Eliot had fallen back asleep. Quentin slipped out of the room without risking another glance. 

The rest of the day was filled with rehearsals, so Quentin didn’t really see anyone except for Julia. They had already been well-prepared for their act before arriving here, but it never hurt to drill everything in even further. They couldn’t afford to make a single mistake tomorrow. They also got a chance to practice on the stage they’d be performing on, so they could make sure there would be absolutely no surprises.

_ _ _ _

When Eliot came back to their room that night, Quentin was already sitting in bed under the covers reading a book. Well, trying to read a book. He’d been on the same page for the last 10 minutes running his hands wildly through his hair, trying to calm his nerves.

“You feeling ready for tomorrow?” Eliot asked as he took off his shoes.

“As ready as we can be,” Quentin replied, looking over the top of his book and tugging on his hair unconsciously. “You?”

Eliot gave him a wide grin. “I’d say so, yeah. Margo and I are pretty excited about this one, actually.”

Quentin raised an eyebrow. “Care to share what your trick is?”

“Trying to get a sneak preview, huh, Coldwater? You’ll have to be craftier than that to get anything out of me, even craftier if you want to get something out of Margo.”

Quentin forced a small chuckle, trying to act normal. It was hard to pay attention to anything Eliot was saying when his brain wouldn’t shut up. Everything was being drowned out by thoughts of _you’re not good enough to be here_ and _you’re going to screw this up for Julia_ and _what even made you think you could ever be a good magician anyway_. Eliot must have sensed that something was off, because he came over to the side of Quentin’s bed and squeezed his shoulder lightly.

“Tomorrow’s gonna go great,” he said. “For both of us. Promise.” And then he went to go take a shower.

Quentin was used to comforting physical gestures coming from Julia, but that was because they’d known each other basically their whole lives. Eliot’s touch certainly felt foreign, but Quentin was surprised by how natural it felt. Eliot just seemed to be a pretty physical person in general, and his ease and comfort with it rubbed off on Quentin. He actually started to feel more relaxed. He set down his book and successfully drifted off to sleep.

_ _ _ _

The first episode was a 2-hour special, and was being broadcast live with a 500-person audience there in the theater. They started off with very brief introductions of the contestants as they walked across the stage to sit on a set of bleachers a bit off to the side, but still visible to the audience. Then there was a longer segment to introduce the judges. They’d taken footage from everyone’s interviews to get choice comments to portray each judge’s persona. Alice the sweet genius who loved routines that used advanced techniques, Kady the tough but fair judge who put an emphasis on exciting presentation, and Penny the incredibly skilled and opinionated asshole. Jane also made a big show of announcing the prize – 2 months getting to headline in Vegas. It was a huge opportunity that could really get Quentin and Julia’s careers off the ground.

The rest of the episode’s structure was fairly straightforward. They’d show a premade edit of interviews and other footage to introduce each pair before they performed, and after the performance the judges would give their opinions. But throughout the show, they’d also sprinkled interview footage focusing on each pair of roommates. It made sense as a way to start introducing drama between the contestants, and confirmed Quentin’s suspicion that the roommate assignments had been very not random.

Julia and Marina’s footage had already been shown just before Marina and Pete performed. Both of them got equal screen time to explain their own version of events of their time performing in New York together. Marina had claimed that Julia left their group because she was mad about not getting enough time in the spotlight. She’d then gone on to say that _Julia_ was the one who had stolen _her_ tricks. Quentin had taken Julia’s hand when the video started to offer some comfort, and by the end he couldn’t feel his hand anymore with how hard Julia had been squeezing it.

It turned out Tick and Lunk had known each other in high school. Tick had been a debate-club nerd, and Lunk had been a football player. Tick seemed a little nervous to say it directly, but it sounded like Lunk had bullied him all throughout high school. Lunk seemed to hardly remember Tick, referring to him as, “oh yeah, that little guy!”

“Now it’s time for our next magic duo, Margo and Eliot!” Jane announced. It was no surprise that when Margo and Eliot came out on stage, they were dressed to impress. Margo wore a sparkling red dress ending just above her knees and what must have been at least 5-inch heels. Eliot sported a black and red vest with ornate print that had a series of vertical silver buttons on each side. He had a black button-up shirt on underneath, and perfectly creased pants that accentuated his long legs.

They both stood in front of a table that had a glass jar and a large box on it. Margo was holding a stack of large cardboard cards.

“We all _think_ that subliminal advertising is bullshit,” Margo began.

“Because, well, it pretty much is,” Eliot added.

“But, maybe not _entirely_. We thought it would be worth putting to the test, tonight.”

“I’m going to throw this little paper ball to select someone in the audience at random,” Eliot announced. This piqued Quentin’s interest. The Centurion Challenge didn’t allow anyone to use plants or stooges, so whatever they were about to do truly was being done on a random audience member.

After someone had been selected, Margo continued. “I’m going to first show you a series of pictures, each with a word association, to subliminally influence you.”

She started going through the cards she was holding one by one, as Eliot provided the commentary. The audience laughed throughout, as Eliot’s word associations interpreted each image in the most negative way possible:

A book – “boring”  
A cute baby – “crying”  
A bouquet of flowers – “funeral”  
Valentine’s day – “disappointment”  
Candy – “diabetes”  
A house on fire – “the state of the world”

Margo glared at Eliot dramatically after that last one. “That wasn’t even one word, El,” she said. Eliot just shrugged.

Margo turned her attention back to the audience member. “Ok, now before we say anything else, I want you to think of a word, any word in the English language, and say it out loud for everyone to hear.”

The man chose “joy”, which got a big laugh from the audience.

“Joy,” Margo deadpanned. “Really. Well, unfortunately for us, that certainly implies we failed to influence you. But, just in case, let’s have you come up on stage.”

Margo took the paper ball back from the audience member and placed it into the glass jar on the table. She then reached into the big box and pulled out a dictionary.

Addressing the volunteer, she said, “Ok, now it’s your job to find your word in the dictionary. I know this might take a while, so in the meantime, Eliot will entertain you all.” Eliot just stood there and glared at Margo. The audience laughed. “I _said_ , Eliot will entertain you all,” Margo repeated.

Eliot finally sighed and took a few steps forward. He took out a deck of cards and performed a quick trick. He selected a card from the deck, snapped his fingers, and the card disappeared in a flash of fire. He made some dramatic motions, and that same card appeared to float right out of his vest pocket and into his hand. Even though it was just a silly little trick, Quentin was amazed with the elegance Eliot performed it with. Every movement flowed into the next like a dance.

By the time Eliot finished, the volunteer had discovered something odd with the dictionary. He showed it to Margo. “Huh, interesting,” she said, “it looks like one page has been ripped out in the J section, right where your word should be.” She turned the dictionary around to show everyone, and sure enough, there was a visible tear where a page had been removed. Quentin leaned forward in his chair. This was getting good.

“Oh, sorry Margo, that one’s on me,” Eliot said. “I think I know where it might have gone – remember that paper ball I threw to select an audience member?”

Margo reached into the jar to pull out the paper ball, and without anything that looked suspicious to Quentin, handed it to the volunteer. He unfolded the paper, and not only was it the right page, but the word “Joy” was circled in red marker. The audience went wild. Quentin was stunned.

What they had performed was, at its essence, a mentalism trick, which was extremely gutsy. That was Penny’s specialty, and he was the harshest judge on the show. They had to know going into this that there was a decent chance they’d get wrecked by his response, which wouldn’t make a great first impression on the audience. Over the course of the night, Penny had already said plenty of cruel things. He’d told Lunk he should change his name to Flunk. He’d told Tick that the way he’d introduced his and Benedict’s trick was so boring that he actually dozed off. And he’d told Humbledrum and Fray, point blank, that he wished he could un-see their act because it was the stupidest shit he’d ever seen. To be honest, Quentin had kind of agreed with that analysis.

Penny was the first to give feedback to Eliot and Margo. “As soon as I see that someone’s doing a mentalism trick, I immediately want the act to be over,” Penny began. “There are plenty of ways to make it interesting for the audience, sure, but I’ve just seen it all. I know how mentalism tricks are done. I mean, I’ve literally written the book on this stuff.” He paused for effect. “And yet… even though I have some idea how you must have done this trick… there’s something I’m missing. I actually do not know how you did it. And I think this is probably the first time, in the history of this show, that I’ve been fooled by a mentalism trick. So,” he shrugged, “kudos to you guys.”

It was the only positive comment Penny gave anyone the entire night.

Quentin had trouble paying attention to the next two acts. He and Julia were performing soon, and no matter how many times he performed in public, he always felt butterflies before going on stage. This was also the biggest performance of his career thus far, and he knew he could not mess this up, not just for his own sake, but also for Julia’s.

He was pulled from his thoughts when Jane announced, “Our next pair of roomies is Quentin and Eliot!” Right, the roommate features they’d been showing. “Let’s take a look at what they had to say about each other.”

Quentin was both incredibly interested to hear Eliot’s interview, but also cringing already at the expectation of hearing his own voice. He knew he didn’t interview well, and just hoped they hadn’t made him look like a complete idiot.

 _“I first met Quentin when he came for his Brakebills audition. The poor guy looked so lost, I wasn’t sure he’d make the cut. But honestly, I really hoped he would. I thought he was cute the first moment I saw him.”_ What? Quentin turned to look at Eliot, not making any attempt to control his own facial expression. But it didn’t matter, Eliot wasn’t looking at him. He was very calmly watching the screen.

It cut to Quentin’s interview. _“He was the first person I met at Brakebills, actually. He just, seemed really um, I don’t know, confident I guess. You know, cool and confident.”_ Fortunately, they’d edited out most of Quentin’s ums and babbling. Unfortunately, it gave the impression that all Quentin had talked about was Eliot, ignoring everything he’d said about Brakebills and the audition itself.

It cut back to Eliot. “ _I tried to spend time with him when he got admitted. I gave him a campus tour – God, he was adorable, so excited about magic.”_

It cut to Quentin. _“Eliot was pretty popular there, and he was two years ahead of me so, beyond that, we didn’t really uh, interact. Much.”_ The camera stayed on Quentin for a few seconds, and to Quentin’s dismay, he was obviously blushing in the footage. God, this was so embarrassing.

Then it went back to Eliot. _“Well, there was this one night. We were both out late for some reason, I was having a smoke by the fountain.”_ Oh my God, the fountain. Quentin didn’t think Eliot would have remembered that.

 _“And we talked for a while. And, well, there was this moment… I very nearly kissed him, but he freaked and got up and left. I figured he wasn’t interested and moved on. But I’m excited we’re in this competition together. Maybe we’ll finally get to become friends.”_ The on-screen Eliot directed his gaze right at the camera. “ _Or, I mean… who knows?”_

Holy shit. What was Eliot doing? He must just be playing this up for the cameras, but it seemed weird to base it on an actual truth. Because what Eliot was saying about the fountain was at least mostly true. There _had_ been a moment, and at the time it had seemed like Eliot might have wanted to kiss him. But Quentin hadn’t been sure, and he’d been far too nervous to find out. So he’d left pretty abruptly, making some lame excuse. Eliot was known for flirting with lots of guys, so Quentin hadn’t let himself think about it too hard. Until now.

Quentin realized that the cameras must be pointed right at him and Eliot in this moment, and Quentin hadn’t been making any attempts to hide his shock or extreme blush. He suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious.

“Next up, you’ll see Quentin perform with his partner Julia, after the break!” Jane announced.

Crew members started going onstage to move around props for his and Julia’s performance. Eliot still wasn’t looking at Quentin, so finally he got up and walked over to the side of the bleachers, standing next to where Eliot was sitting.

“Eliot, what the hell?” It was the first thing he could think to say. “What was all that about? You didn’t think to warn me?”

“Quentin, as I’m sure you are aware, this is a television show,” Eliot said calmly. “I’m doing us both a favor. People love a good love story.”

“Yeah,” Quentin huffed. “By making me look like an asshole who ran away from kissing you? They’ll love you, sure, playing it up as the poor guy who got his heart broken, hoping for a second chance.” The more Quentin talked about it, the angrier he was getting. This show had the potential to make both him and Julia look like real jerks.

“I disagree,” Eliot said simply. “Your interview footage was plenty flattering. Look, we can talk later about how exactly we want to play this. But it’ll be good for _both_ of us, I promise.” Eliot reached out to touch his shoulder, but Quentin pulled his arm back.

“Fine,” he growled, walking to where Julia had already headed backstage to get ready for the performance. As he waited for the commercial break to be over, he felt his heart sinking. The fact that Eliot had told the camera crew he had a crush on Quentin basically confirmed that there was no chance Eliot could ever _actually_ have a crush on Quentin. He was just a pawn in Eliot’s master plan to make the audience love him. Quentin tried to shake the thought aside. He needed to focus. He was about to perform, and he could not afford to be distracted. Julia squeezed his arm in reassurance, and he gave her a small smile.

“We got this, Q,” she said. Yeah. They got this.

_ _ _ _

The performance went perfectly. Quentin was thrilled when Alice gave them enthusiastic positive feedback. Kady also liked the trick, which Quentin knew was the main thing that mattered to Julia. Penny was mean, as predicted, but his comments to them were certainly not the worst of the night. According to Penny, the magic itself had been good, but he and Julia’s presentation had been “boring and unoriginal.” 

After the show, a shuttle bus came to take everyone back to the cottage. A small celebration broke out, not as wild as the party their first night, but just a casual gathering with drinks. Quentin cornered Eliot as soon as he could.

“Ok, it’s later. What exactly is your plan here?”

“Jeez, Quentin, we both just had our first, highly successful, might I add, performances of the competition. Relax for a minute. Here, I’ll make you a drink.”

Quentin opened his mouth to protest, but Eliot had already gone over to the bar. He was making something that looked complicated, pouring a bunch of carefully measured ingredients into the cocktail shaker. Quentin reluctantly took a sip of the drink when Eliot handed to him. He didn’t admit it out loud, but whatever it was, it was delicious.

“Seriously, El, can we please talk about this?”

“ _El_ , wow, getting awfully familiar there, _Q_. Not that I mind,” Eliot smirked behind his glass. Fuck, it was just something he’d heard Margo call Eliot so many times, he hadn’t even realized he’d said it.

“Whatever. Eliot. Please. What’s the long-term plan here? We at least have to be on the same page. Which would’ve been nice earlier…”

Eliot turned to fully face Quentin, looking suddenly all business. “Ok, right. But not here, come on, there’s a nook over there far from all the mics they have set up here.” Eliot took them over to the corner of the cottage, into a partially enclosed area Quentin hadn’t noticed before.

“So,” Eliot began, “what I was thinking is we’d spend the first, say, two weeks flirting in public spaces. You know, keep it a bit subtle at first, then get more obvious. The tv crew is on our side. Well, mostly. They’re on the side of good tv. So we just have to give them enough decent material to work with.”

Quentin took a breath. “Ok, so we flirt for a while, and then what?”

“Well, I was thinking we… move things along, after that.”

“And what is that supposed to mean.” Quentin was getting impatient. 

“I mean, more than flirting. Make it look like we’re actually dating. Have some romantic moments. Slowly get more serious as time progresses. No one’s going to want to vote off a will they/won’t they couple for the first few weeks, and by the time we start actually dating, they’ll be so invested in us that they won’t want either of us to go home.”

Eliot was so matter-of-fact about the whole thing. Quentin hated to admit it, but it was actually a decent plan. If they could play it right. But beyond the competition itself, Quentin had another concern. He knew that Eliot wasn’t actually interested in him. He knew that it was all for the tv crew. But at the same time, he knew himself, and he knew that he could easily get too caught up in something like this. Especially given that Eliot was his roommate, so they were being forced into seeing a lot of each other. And he couldn’t afford to become distracted with those kinds of feelings given the high stakes of the competition.

“So, just to be clear. We’d occasionally flirt where the cameras could see us, but we wouldn’t have to do it all the time?”

“Well, basically, yeah,” Eliot said, then hesitated. “But it might help to keep the act going at least a bit all the time. If they were to ever interview any of the other contestants about us…”

“So you’re saying we have to always pretend when we’re around other people?”

“It… would probably be safer,” Eliot said. “Look, let’s just try it out for this week, ok? Just flirting, nothing too much. We’ll work our way up from there, yeah?”

Fuck. This was going to absolutely break Quentin. But the plan made sense, and if he was being honest with himself, he kind of wanted to give it a try. Even just the idea of pretending to be dating Eliot was giving him butterflies in his stomach. Quentin knew it was pathetic, but that didn’t make it any less true.

“Ok, fine,” Quentin said. “I’ll do it, just um, I’ll probably let you lead with the, uh, flirting. I think my best chance to get away from looking like the jerk who didn’t want to kiss you is to look like the guy who was just too nervous.” It was the complete truth, which would make it that much easier to act out.

Eliot nodded. “Makes sense, ok. I’ll go talk to some other people, and I’ll find you at some point. I’ll play the _cool and confident_ guy,” Eliot smirked at those words as Quentin cringed, remembering his interview, “and you’ll play the smitten but nervous guy. Shouldn’t be too hard.” Eliot winked and sauntered off, leaving Quentin gaping after him.

After a moment, Quentin walked back into the central area of the room. Julia came up to him immediately. “So um, what’s going on there?”

“We’re, uh, going to pretend to be pining for each other,” Quentin said.

Julia snorted. “Pretend? Q, you and that guy barely take your eyes off each other any time you’re in the same room.”

“Jules, that’s ridiculous.” At the look on Julia’s face, he reconsidered. “Ok, well, mostly ridiculous. I mean, yeah, Eliot’s obviously extremely hot. And his magic style is probably the most elegant thing I’ve ever seen. And he’s also, like, really nice when he’s not being a jerk? But, uh, I barely know him, and I have to stay focused. And he obviously doesn’t like me back, otherwise he wouldn’t be doing all this shit with the pretending to flirt in front of the cameras.”

“Whatever you say, Q,” Julia said, shaking her head. “But it sounds like you’re super into him, and I wouldn’t be so sure about how he feels about you… it’s pretty easy to fake something if it’s actually true.”

True to his word, Eliot came up to Quentin about 15 minutes later. “Can I make you a drink?” Eliot asked.

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

“I’m feeling… creative. Come with me, you can help me experiment!” With that, Eliot grabbed Quentin’s hand, gently pulling him towards the bar.

“Ok,” Eliot rubbed his hands together. “Tell me your favorite fruit.”

“Bananas,” Quentin replied. It was really peaches, but the only peach-flavored alcohol he knew of was peach schnapps, which he’d never actually liked.

Eliot smirked, and then broke into a genuine smile. “Uh huh, bananas, fascinating.” Quentin rolled his eyes, but despite the childish humor, found himself smiling along.

Eliot chopped up a banana, took about half the slices, and started muddling them into a paste. “Ok. I’m thinking we go for a dessert-type of drink here. Do you like chocolate?” Quentin nodded. “Excellent, could you hand me the Crème de Cacao?”

Quentin hunted through the shelf, missing it several times because from the name it sounded like he should be looking for something either cream-like or chocolate-colored, and this turned out to be neither of those things. It was just a clear liquid. As he handed it to Eliot, Eliot made eye contact with him and brushed his fingers over Quentin’s, lingering for a long moment. Quentin gulped. He could totally handle this.

Eliot smiled as he turned back to the bartender kit, measuring out some of the liquid and pouring it into the shaker. He then added some heavy cream to the banana paste, mixing it enthusiastically with a whisk. He next added vodka and Kahlua.

“Ok, so basically a chocolate banana white Russian?” Quentin asked.

“So you do know your cocktails,” Eliot looked pleased. He added ice and did a showy one-handed shake. Quentin raised an eyebrow.

“You sure like to impress, don’t you?” he asked. Eliot laughed.

“If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing it right,” he replied with a shrug. He strained out the drink, leaving a bit of a banana mess behind. “Well, it might not have been my best idea, but it should still have the banana flavor in there.”

Eliot took a few of the leftover banana slices and put them on the rim of the glass for garnish. Finally, he grabbed some chocolate sauce from underneath the bar and drizzled it over the top. It was, at the very least, the fanciest-looking drink Quentin had ever had. Eliot handed it to Quentin, leaning his elbows on the bar and resting his chin on his hands. He blinked up at Quentin expectantly. Quentin took a sip. It was delicious. The banana flavor was subtle, but definitely there. It tasted like some kind of banana mocha. 

“It’s really good, El,” he said, smiling. He figured the nickname was fair play. Eliot smiled back.

“Mind if I try?” Eliot moved towards Quentin, standing so close that Quentin had to move the hand holding his drink back against his chest. Eliot slowly took the drink and took a sip.

He hummed, considering it. “I think next time I’d definitely use a blender. And maybe try rum instead. But it’s good, I deem it a success.” He handed the glass back to Quentin, lightly touching Quentin’s wrist with his free hand, as if to steady it while handing over the drink.

“You have a bit of chocolate… here, I’ll get it,” Eliot said, reaching behind him and successfully obtaining a napkin without looking. He slowly brushed the napkin over Quentin’s upper lip. And Quentin couldn’t help it, he melted into the touch. Eliot’s lips were right there, and Eliot was staring at his lips which was just. A sight that was really turning him on, even though he knew it was just so he could get the chocolate off, and moreso just to give the camera crew some potential footage. But despite all that, Quentin felt himself start to lean forward, entranced by everything that was Eliot Waugh.

But Eliot took a step back, smiled, and just said, “Enjoy the drink, Quentin.” Quentin walked away in a daze.

He followed Julia around for the rest of the night again. He felt a little silly for not being able to socialize on his own, but Julia didn’t seem to mind. Eventually, Quentin found himself in a conversation with Julia, Eliot, and Margo.

“Come on, you _have_ to at least give me a hint on how you did it!” Quentin said. He was pretty drunk at this point and had maybe been babbling for the past several minutes about how much he’d liked Eliot and Margo’s trick. Eliot and Margo exchanged a long look, and they seemed to silently reach a decision. They simultaneously turned forward and looked at Quentin with conspiratorial expressions.

“Ok, Coldwater,” Margo started. “I’ll give you one _tiny_ hint, and that’s it!” Quentin nodded excitedly, and Margo motioned for him to lean in. “Those high heels weren’t just for show,” she whispered. And then she and Eliot left him to puzzle over that bit of information.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The milk and cookies trick Josh was referring to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF0afU5bF4M  
> Eliot and Margo's dictionary trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SH-ySocppc


	3. Maps

The day after the first performance was filled with planned activities, interviews, and logistics. They wouldn’t start rehearsals until the weekend. Performance episodes took place on Wednesdays and results episodes were Fridays, and there was no reason to have everyone rehearse in between since one pair would be going home anyway.

Quentin and Julia’s interview was scheduled for 11AM, which let Quentin sleep in pretty late. When he woke up, Eliot wasn’t there. He went downstairs at about 10:45 and was immediately accosted by Jane.

“Oh, good, you’re here. Let’s get you into makeup.” It still felt weird to Quentin to wear makeup, especially when someone else was putting it on him. But it wasn’t very much. Besides, they seemed to fuss much more over his hair than anything else.

“Right, let’s talk about yesterday,” Jane started. “How did you feel about your performance?”

Julia took the lead. “We felt really good about it. Honestly, we didn’t think it could have gone better. We were really happy with the audience’s reaction.”

“Excellent,” Jane said. “And what did you think of the other performances?”

“They were awesome!” Quentin said. “I really loved seeing everyone’s different styles, this is a really unique set of people.”

“And did you have a favorite performance?”

Should Quentin be honest, and say Eliot’s was his favorite? Or would that seem like too much? He didn’t want it to look like he was faking it. Julia saved him.

“Well, Q couldn’t shut up about Eliot and Margo’s performance. He was begging them both all night to tell him how they’d done it.” This was actually perfect. Having Julia subtly tease him about Eliot was a great strategy.

“It was just, it was such a good trick, and they have really good stage presence,” Quentin added.

“And Julia, how did you feel watching Marina and Pete perform?”

“It was a good performance. I mean, they’ve always been good. But to me, it’s all basically stuff I’ve seen before. They’ve never been great at coming up with their own tricks. I think that’s what’s going to hurt them, is having new stuff to show each week.”

“And how is it, rooming with her?” Jane pressed.

Julia sighed. “At first we argued a lot.”

“There was a lot of shouting,” Quentin supplied.

“But we’ve just decided to stop interacting entirely, and to just get through it so we can focus on the competition, which is what actually matters.”

“And Quentin,” Jane continued, “you learned some interesting information about your roommate last night. Can you tell me a bit about that?”

“Umm, yeah, I mean, I wasn’t expecting… “ Leaning on the truth was the easiest way to lie. “When I first saw Eliot here, I didn’t think he’d remember me at all. But um, it’s kind of awkward, because, I mean, we’re rooming together, and we’re competing against each other? And I’m supposed to be focusing on that. And I am. And it’s kind of hard to tell, you know, how serious he was being?” If they were going to stretch this out, Quentin figured he had to act unsure about Eliot’s actual intensions. “So I’m trying not to get too caught up in it. But uh… last night after the show, it really seemed like…” Quentin took a purposeful pause, then forced a chuckle. “I shouldn’t even be saying all this, you guys are just gonna put this up for everyone, including Eliot, to see, so I’m just gonna stop there.”

“That was great,” Jane looked pleased. “Thank you so much, both of you, you’re free to go. Remember at noon we’re leaving for our shopping outing!”

The Centurion Challenge loved to get footage of everyone spending time together, so throughout the competition they would schedule various trips and events. They were keeping it simple this first week and taking everyone to the mall, and they’d given each contestant $200 for spending money. Quentin had never liked the mall, but figured he might be able to find something worthwhile to spend the free money on at the very least.

Unfortunately for Quentin, Julia _loved_ the mall. Which meant as soon as they got there, she went off with Fen, Margo, Fray, and Arielle to the nearest women’s clothing store. Quentin would have to handle this outing on his own. A few more camera operators besides Todd had come in order to follow each group that split off.

Quentin knew he should probably stick with Eliot, but he suspected shopping with Eliot would be, well, not exactly up his alley. He decided to latch onto Josh instead, ending up in a group that also included Lunk, Benedict, and Ess. As they went into their first store, he looked back to see Eliot walk off with Tick, Sebastian, Idri, and Pete, as well as Todd.

About an hour and four stores later, Quentin was looking through a selection of messenger bags when he heard the distinct sound of a British accent behind him.

“This jacket would look absolutely perfect on you,” Sebastian was talking to Eliot, holding the jacket in question up to Eliot’s body and placing a hand on his chest. “The color would make your eyes look positively stunning. Not that they aren’t already gorgeous.”

Wow, that was some heavy duty flirting. Quentin felt a slight hint of jealousy, but he wasn’t particularly keen to act on it. But maybe he should do something? If this footage of Sebastian and Eliot got released it could ruin their plan. Eliot seemed to be way ahead of him.

“Hmm,” Eliot said, his mouth in a line, taking the jacket. “I’ll take it under consideration. You should take a look at those sweaters over there, I bet they’ll have something you like.” And then he turned away. Sebastian pouted a bit but walked over to the sweater area.

Eliot hadn’t seemed to notice Quentin. Maybe he should go over to him? Just as he was about to, Idri walked up to Eliot and placed a hand lightly on his arm.

“You have to tell me what you think of these ties, I need your expert fashion advice.” He grinned widely at Eliot, standing awfully close and making direct eye contact. Was he flirting with Eliot too? Granted, this was a bit subtler, but it certainly seemed like something was going on there.

“Very nice selections. I have to say I prefer the blue, though. The red’s pattern is a little busy.” Eliot took a small step away from Idri as he said it, and that’s when he noticed Quentin staring right at him. Which was becoming an embarrassingly frequent occurrence. Sigh.

But Eliot just grinned. “Quentin, fancy seeing you here,” he said as he walked over. “God, are you buying one of these?” He gestured to the messenger bags. Quentin felt defensive.

“They’re useful!”

“Well, if you must, at least get one of the ones over on this side. It’s a much better brand.”

“Uhh, thanks,” Quentin said, turning back to the messenger bags. There was awkward silence for a moment, and then Quentin realized no one was filming them.

“Where’s Todd?” he asked.

“God, he decided he was going to take this opportunity to do some shopping as well, and got stuck choosing between jackets at our last store. Presumably he’ll catch up, eventually.” Eliot shrugged. “You having fun?”

That was interesting. It seemed like Sebastian and Idri had waited until there wasn’t a camera on them to make their move on Eliot. Which was killing Quentin’s running theory that they were just trying to stir up drama to gain popularity. Everyone had seen what Eliot had said about Quentin in his interview. But probably Idri and Sebastian could tell that Eliot hadn’t actually been serious. After all, Quentin was nerdy and awkward and Eliot was, well, Eliot. And it was a reality competition show. Quentin shouldn’t have been surprised at all the attention Eliot was getting. But he knew he could never compete with guys like Idri and Sebastian who were confident enough to unashamedly go after what they wanted, so he couldn’t help but feel a bit dejected.

“Ummm, I guess? I mean, malls aren’t really my thing, so…” Eliot laughed.

“Yeah, I kind of guessed that,” he said, looking Quentin over carefully, appraising his outfit. Quentin crossed his arms over his chest, feeling increasingly self-conscious.

Just then, Todd burst through the front door of the store. “Eliot, I decided! I didn’t get a jacket after all, instead…” he reached into his shopping bag to pull something out, “I got a vest!”

Eliot stood silent for a moment. “So you did, Todd. The same exact vest I bought. How great.”

Quentin tried to hold his laughter in but was failing. Todd seemed oblivious to it all, though, still standing there beaming at Eliot while Eliot glared back.

“Come along, Quentin, let’s get you some _actual_ clothes.” He dragged Quentin by his hand towards the other side of the store.

Their two groups joined up after that, and the rest of the outing ended up being actually fun. Quentin enjoyed trying on clothes to show Eliot. Sometimes Eliot would take one look at him and send him immediately back in to change, and sometimes he’d make Quentin do a few spins and walk up and down the hallway before inevitably rejecting the outfit. Three items had been deemed acceptable for purchase, after much deliberation on Eliot’s part. Quentin refused to buy one of them for being far too fancy for his tastes, but he’d actually liked the others. By the end of the trip, Quentin had a new jacket, a new pair of pants, and, despite Eliot’s protests, a brand new messenger bag.

_ _ _ _

To Quentin’s mild surprise, Humbledrum and Fray were not the pair to go home that week. They ended up in the judges’ bottom three, but America had apparently loved them. They’d been saved with the highest number of votes of anyone in danger. They might be stuck with those two for a while. Arielle and Lunk were the first to be eliminated, with Tick and Benedict saved by the viewers. Quentin was a little sad to see Arielle go. She was sweet, but her partner had seemed like kind of an idiot. She deserved better.

The previous day’s interviews had all been edited to add relevant clips from Wednesday’s show, as well as interactions in the cottage. Quentin stole a glance at Eliot while they were showing his and Julia’s interview. He could see him smiling and occasionally nodding. Quentin felt a sense of pride at what seemed to be Eliot’s approval.

In the part where Quentin had said “ _But uh… last night after the show, it really seemed like…”_ they showed a quick clip of Eliot standing right up against Quentin at the bar, taking a sip of the drink he’d made Quentin and then handing it back. Quentin knew he should probably be feeling embarrassed watching this footage of himself, but seeing Eliot flirt with him like that from an outside angle was honestly pretty damn arousing. 

In Eliot’s interview, Quentin was only briefly mentioned, with Eliot saying, _“I’m hoping I didn’t make him too uncomfortable with everything I said. But we only have such a short time here anyway, I don’t see a point in not being honest.”_

Eliot was a really good actor. Quentin had to keep reminding himself that’s all this was. He looked so earnest when he said it, just the right amount of shy confidence to seem convincing. He knew exactly what he was doing.

They also showed a montage of the mall outing, edited together to highlight the friendships that were forming. Quentin was particularly amused to see the dynamic forming between Fen and her roommate.

“Fray, no, you are not buying that dress, it is too inappropriate!” Fen was scolding Fray in a dressing room.

“Oh my God, you’re not my mom!” Fray whined. It then cut to an interview of Fen after the fact.

“She didn’t buy the dress,” she said, smiling victoriously. 

_ _ _ _

While the contestants had been allowed to perform any trick for their first performance, the rest of the competition was structured a bit differently. From now on, a theme or constraint would be announced each week at the end of the results episode, and each pair would have to create a new routine to match.

They’d been given nearly unlimited access to props and resources to help them, as well as a decent amount of time to rehearse on stage, in case anyone needed to take advantage of large props or trap doors. Besides that, each pair of contestants had their own small room to practice in, to keep them separated so that no one knew what anyone else was working on.

This week’s theme was _Maps_. When it had been announced, one contestant, Benedict, had actually jumped out of his chair in excitement.

Having to create a brand new routine in just a few days meant that downtime between shows became a rare occurrence. It was now Monday, with the next performance just two days away. Julia and Quentin had worked for over 10 hours straight, barely even taking meal breaks, and it had finally gotten to a point where it was doing them more harm than good to continue working. They’d gone back to the cottage to turn in for the night. Quentin wasn’t quite ready to go to sleep yet, though. The cottage had an exciting supply of rare and expensive magic books, and Quentin intended on taking full advantage of it while he could.

After a few minutes of reading, Quentin felt someone sit next to him on the couch. It was Eliot, looking at the book Quentin had chosen with mild curiosity. Quentin immediately tensed. Any public interaction with Eliot was loaded knowing that anything could be used as footage.

“The Berglas Effects,” Eliot read the title aloud. “Definitely an interesting read, but I’d never rely on those techniques in an actual performance.”

Quentin relaxed. Conversations about magic, he could do. “Yeah, I’d always wanted to read it, mostly out of curiosity – from the reviews it didn’t seem like something I’d perform with either, so I never spent the money on it. But there’s so much more than just his famous Any Card at Any Number trick in here! And he’s really detailed with his descriptions!”

Quentin kept going on about the parts of the book he’d read so far, and Eliot listened with a small smile on his face. It seemed like maybe Eliot was enjoying the conversation? But maybe he was bored of it and had just plastered on the smile to be polite. And regardless, any interaction with Quentin in a public place was probably just acting, anyway. Quentin started to trail off as he realized, ready to give Eliot an out from the conversation.

But Eliot stayed. They talked for at least an hour about magic. Different books they’d read, techniques they’d each found useful. Eliot tended to skim books rather than read them in detail, preferring to learn from watching magicians perform and having conversations with them. He said you could find out about techniques that didn’t exist in any book that way. They even got into a discussion about people revealing tricks on YouTube, and how expectations for magicians were changing in a world where performances were filmed and information was so freely available on the internet. Quentin was really enjoying himself. He never got to have these discussions with anyone. He’d been pretty shy at Brakebills, and even with Julia, they usually kept their discussions focused on their own routines.

“Oh, shit, it’s midnight,” Q realized after glancing at the clock behind Eliot’s head. “I should, uh…”

“Yeah,” Eliot said, standing up and stretching. “Me too.” And then there was an awkward moment, like when two people say goodbye and then realize they’re actually going the same way, before they both headed to their room.

_ _ _ _

It was the night of the second performance, and Quentin was feeling calmer than last time. Having gone through the experience once already, he knew what to expect. And, nerves aside, he genuinely loved performing.

“We’re going to select one member of the audience to help us out tonight. If you could start passing this ball around, my partner Quentin will turn around and say stop.” The ball was an inflated globe to better go with the Maps theme.

“Stop!” Quentin said after a few seconds. They brought the woman holding the ball up to the stage, where there was a table with a small wooden box on top, as well as a large map the size of a movable whiteboard.

“Ok,” Quentin said. “Before we start, I’m just going to take out what we have in this box. As you can see, there are four darts.” The volunteer nodded. “I’m going to give these to you,” he handed her the darts, “and then – and I want you to watch this – I’m just going to put one dollar into the box. So you can see there’s four quarters going in.” Quentin carefully dropped four quarters, one at a time, into the box. The volunteer nodded again, satisfied.

“Next, I’m going to put this blindfold on you, if that’s ok,” Julia said. “Now, we’re going to have you stand here, and just throw those darts at the map.”

Fortunately, they’d picked an audience member who could actually throw a dart. It would have been funny if she’d missed the board, but the acts were on a strict time limit.

Quentin shouted out states as the darts hit the map. “Wisconsin! Texas! Iowa! California!”

“Excellent marksmanship,” Julia said, removing the audience member’s blindfold. “Now, there’s one more item in that box, it’s an envelope of paper. I want you to take that out for me and read what’s inside.”

The audience member did so, reading out, “You will choose Oklahoma, South Dakota, New Jersey, and Washington.” She gave them a look somewhere between confusion and pity.

“Oh, no,” Quentin said.

“I really thought… man,” Julia said.

“Well, you know what,” Quentin said. “You’ve been awesome, so the least we can do is let you have that dollar. Go ahead and take those quarters out of the box.”

Julia and Quentin kept talking to each other, acting disappointed, but then Julia said, “Wait! Before you go, could you read off the states on the back of those quarters for us, one by one?”

“Iowa, Wisconsin, Texas, and…“ the woman slowed down, either from shock or for dramatic effect, “California!” The room roared with applause.

It went to the judges. Kady started.

“Can I just say, I love that you blindfolded an audience member and had them throw sharp objects across the stage. Awesome trick.”

Alice went next. “I really enjoyed that! It was a simple idea, but you achieved a really great impact there at the end.”

Finally, Penny. Quentin held his breath. “That was a perfectly adequate trick. The fakeout ‘oh no we made a mistake’ is kind of overdone, but using the quarters was a creative prediction reveal at least.”

Quentin would happily take it. 

Fortunately, Quentin and Julia had been the second act to go, so he could watch most of the performances while completely relaxed. Throughout the show they’d included some edits of footage taken from the cottage. Quentin wasn’t paying too much attention to them, since he was much more interested in getting to the magic, but he became very alert when the screen cut to a clip of him and Julia talking in the living room. Quentin could feel his palms start to sweat. He couldn’t immediately tell when this had been filmed or what they had been talking about. Julia spoke first in the clip.

_“Q, you and that guy barely take your eyes off each other any time you’re in the same room.”_

_“Jules, that’s ridiculous. Ok, well, mostly ridiculous. I mean, yeah, Eliot’s obviously extremely hot. And his magic style is probably the most elegant thing I’ve ever seen. And he’s also, like, really nice when he’s not being a jerk? But, uh, I barely know him, and I have to stay focused. And he obviously doesn’t like me back…”_

At that, the entire audience went, “Aww!”

Dear God. Quentin hadn’t even considered that they might show that conversation. He knew his face was turning bright red. He didn’t dare to look over at Eliot. He’d called Eliot _extremely hot_ and had said Eliot didn’t _like him back_. It had felt like a private conversation with his best friend, but he should have known better. He needed to be more careful what he said in that cottage.

It would be ok, maybe he could recover from this. Would Eliot believe that it was just acting? Eliot had been taking the lead with all the flirting for the camera, could it be plausible that Quentin had arranged some fake conversations independently to help sell the whole thing?

Or, maybe Quentin could just own up to it. Really, Eliot was just objectively hot. Quentin shouldn’t be ashamed to admit that, right? But the words _like me back_ , that was pretty damning. Maybe Eliot hadn’t been paying enough attention to catch that. 

After the show, they all took the bus back to the cottage. Quentin avoided Eliot for as long as he could, but when everyone got into the living room, Eliot cornered him. Well, at least that’s what it felt like to Quentin. Really Eliot just casually walked up to him.

“So…” Eliot started, a smirk on his face. “Extremely hot, huh?”

Quentin found himself in a horrible cycle of blushing, then being embarrassed about blushing and thus blushing harder. Could your face actually start bleeding from excess blood flow? 

“Umm…” Quentin paused. He actually had a fairly reasonable out, here. Eliot was talking to him about this in a public, filmed area of the cottage. He could just go along with it as part of the act.

“I mean,” Quentin continued, slowly. “I guess it’s like you said? We’re here for such a short time, no point in not being honest?” He made sure to use words from one of Eliot’s previous interviews. Let him know that this was for the cameras.

Eliot grinned, stepping closer and raising an eyebrow. “And I’m nice, when I’m not being a jerk.”

Quentin gulped. Eliot had gotten close enough that Q could feel his warm breath faintly against his face. Quentin tried to think of something witty to say back, but his brain was refusing to function properly.

“Yeah,” he said. It came out as a whisper.

“Mmm,” Eliot hummed. “I think you’re nice too.” And then Eliot kissed him.

Quentin’s brain went into overdrive. How into this kiss could he get away with acting without giving himself away to Eliot? And what kind of kiss should it be, anyway? Was it better to keep it chaste, or was something more passionate ok? And what if after this, Eliot didn’t see any point in kissing Quentin again because there’d already be camera footage of it? What if this was Quentin’s only chance to do this?

Quentin’s brain quickly shut up as Eliot’s tongue slipped into his mouth, dancing gently with his own. Quentin’s throat let out an involuntary sound somewhere between a whine and a moan, and Eliot responded by bringing his hand up to the back of Quentin’s neck. He slid it upwards to tangle his fingers in Quentin’s hair, pulling lightly while guiding Quentin’s head into a better angle.

Is this what all kisses were supposed to feel like? Had Quentin just been supremely unlucky with his previous partners? He would never have described other kisses he’d had as _bad_ , but compared to this…

Quentin brought his hands to rest on Eliot’s hips without thinking about it, stopping himself just at the last second from pulling Eliot’s body tightly against his own.

All too soon, Eliot was pulling away. Quentin chased Eliot’s lips instinctually before remembering their present situation, that this wasn’t real. Quentin stood there dumbly for a moment, trying to restart his brain, unable to take his eyes off of Eliot’s lips. He watched as Eliot’s tongue darted out to unconsciously lick them, and Quentin’s stomach did actual somersaults thinking about where that tongue had just been. They stared at each other for another few seconds, and then Eliot cleared his throat with a tight smile, his posture straightening.

“Well, I think I’d better turn in for the night,” Eliot said, and he turned and swiftly went up the stairs. Quentin leaned back against the couch behind him for support. He was so fucked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quentin and Julia's map trick: https://youtu.be/ReYshd_AUT4?t=123


	4. Trinity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've updated the total chapter number! It's possible it will change slightly, but 9 is my current estimate.

“Ok everyone, gather ‘round,” Jane announced. Everyone had been told to be downstairs at noon for this Thursday’s group event. “Today’s activity is… a cake decorating contest!”

There were a variety of reactions to this news. Josh threw both arms up in the air and took a mini-victory lap, high fiving Fen on the way. Eliot and Margo smirked at each other, looking confident. Marina looked positively disgusted by the idea, and Julia appeared to already be going into fierce competition mode.

“We’ll be taking a picture of all the finished cakes, and viewers will vote for their favorite online. The winner will be announced at tomorrow’s results episode, and….” Jane sounded excited, pausing for dramatic effect, “there will be a prize! The winning pair gets advice on their next act from tomorrow’s guest performer, Pearl Sunderland!” Of course they would take a silly cake decorating challenge that had nothing to do with magic and give the winners a prize that could actually be relevant to winning the competition. Figured.

“You’ll have exactly one hour to decorate your cake with the supplies we’ve provided. You’ll each find a station labeled with your names in either the kitchen or dining room. Your time starts… now!”

It was a mad dash for the kitchen. Quentin and Julia found their station right away next to the dining room doorway. A decent assortment of ingredients had been laid out for them. Quentin recognized a pile of fondant from the baking shows he would sometimes watch. Besides that, there was frosting, food coloring, sprinkles, and various candies. There were also several tools which seemed to be for piping and spreading frosting.

“Ok, Q, we need a game plan here.”

“Right, ok. Like a theme?”

“Yeah, uhh, we could do a magic theme? Make like, coins and cards out of fondant, and stick them around?”

“Yeah,” Quentin agreed, “that sounds good. Umm, I can start on coloring the fondant?”

“Cool, I’ll start shaping it around the base.”

This was good. Quentin wasn’t experienced with baked goods and he wasn’t particularly talented at art, but he did have an eye for detail. And he and Julia worked great together.

They decided that instead of just decorating the edges of the cake with playing cards, they would build a house of cards on top of the cake, with stacks of coins decorating the edges. Quentin was finishing up the painting job on the cards while Julia stacked them.

Just as Julia was stacking the last card on top, Marina walked past and bumped forcefully into Julia’s arm, knocking the whole stack down.

“Oops,” Marina said, smiling.

“Hey!” Julia shouted. “Let’s see what your cake looks like with an imprint of your ass in it!”

“Jules, calm down, it’s ok, we can fix it.” Quentin really wanted to avoid drama, lest their cake become even more wounded.

“Yeah, you have a whole…” Marina looked at her phone, “2 minutes left. Well good luck!” And then she practically skipped away. But before she got out of range, Julia managed to get some red frosting onto the back of her pants.

“Oops!” Julia said in a mocking tone to Quentin. He gave her a smile, but immediately got back to business.

“Ok, let’s fix this!” They finished just in time, and finally had a chance to look at everyone else’s cakes.

Fen and Josh had also gone with a traditional magic theme, only their cake was shaped like a top hat with a cute bunny coming out of it. A magic wand and some playing cards rested at the cake’s base. It was impressive.

Not everyone had incorporated magic into their design. Zelda and Harriette’s cake looked like a stack of books. Idri and Ess had gone for a regal crown-shape with candies arranged like jewels on the edges. Margo and Eliot had done a cocktail theme, with a fondant margarita glass on top and various fruits decorating the sides. And, no shock here, Fray and Humbledrum had attempted to make their cake look like a bear that was scooping honey out of a pot. But their bear had ended up looking more like a brown monkey/alien hybrid, and to be honest, the pot of honey kind of resembled a toilet full of piss.

“Ok, wonderful job everyone! Todd will take some photos of everyone’s masterpieces, and then, we eat cake!”

_ _ _ _

The cake tasted ok, once Quentin removed most of the fondant that was thickly piled on top of his slice. He was sitting at a table with Julia, Josh, Fen, Margo, and Eliot. Josh had started a food pun war everyone was participating in.

“My favorite Christmas movie is _frosting_ the Snowman!” Fen contributed happily.

“No, clearly the best Christmas movie is The Night-Beer Before Christmas,” said Margo.

“Nope, wrong challah-day, that’s a Halloween movie,” Josh shot back.

What happened next at that moment, Quentin would only be able to later describe as his hand developing a mind of its own and deciding that its sole mission was to seek revenge on the person who usually controlled it. Eliot had some frosting on the corner of his mouth, and Quentin just… leaned forward and wiped it off with his finger. And then. Then he actually stuck said finger into his mouth and slowly licked it off, all while making direct eye contact with Eliot.

The entire table fell silent. This was not a Quentin thing to do at all. So far Eliot had initiated every single instance of flirting they’d done, which hadn’t been much, and even then it had always been in “private” – sure there were cameras watching for everyone to see eventually, but no physical people had been present at the time.

This all happened within a matter of seconds, and Q was absolutely mortified as soon as his brain caught up to his body. Eliot looked at him shocked for a moment, but very quickly recovered to form a smirk. Julia, on the other hand, was still staring at Quentin like he’d grown a third head – that’s right, not just a second head, but a third one.

“Uh, just getting the snowman off your face,” Quentin said quickly, referencing Fen’s frosting pun. “And we all know The Nightmare Before Christmas is for both holidays - a two _thyme_ s a year film.” A truly terrible pun, but it got the conversation to continue moving at least.

_ _ _ _

“Ok Q, what’s going on with you and Eliot?” Julia had dragged Quentin up to her room as soon as they’d finished their cake.

“You know what’s going on, Jules. We’re pretending to be flirting with each other.”

“Q, you _know_ that display was more than what’s necessary to successfully fake this whole thing.”

“Well, I don’t know, we want to make it convincing,” Quentin shrugged. He knew she was right, but he felt a need to defend his hand’s unexplainable behavior. 

Julia narrowed her eyes. “There’s something you’re not telling me… I know you think he’s hot, but it’s not like you to be like this just with someone you find attractive.”

“Well, uh, we maybe kissed last night?” Julia squealed in response. “But, I mean it was just a part of the act, it wasn’t real. But… it was still like, really nice? Is that super pathetic?”

“Q, you _like_ him. Like, you _like_ him like him. A lot.” He hated how big her smile was.

“Jules, we’re not in middle school…”

“It’s not pathetic at all, _unless…_ ” Quentin groaned, suspecting what she was going to say, “…you don’t _talk to him_ about how you feel.”

“Yeah yeah, Miss ‘communication is the most important thing in a relationship.’”

“Well, it is,” Julia insisted.

“It’s just, it’s too early for that. I’ll say something. Maybe. You know… at the end of this whole thing. Maybe.”

Julia sighed. “Q, if you don’t do something about this, you’re going to regret it.”

Marina came into the room just then, took one look at Quentin, and said, “Ew, get out.” Quentin lifted his hands up and retreated into the hallway. 

_ _ _ _

Quentin and Julia had again managed to escape the bottom three. It was a relief to get to sit through the results show without having to worry. Pearl Sunderland’s guest performance was a thrill to watch. Quentin had glanced over at the judge’s table during her act, and even Penny had been smiling.

They’d been showing segments of videos from the cottage all night, and Quentin was waiting anxiously to see what they’d done about his and Eliot’s kiss. There was no way it had slipped past them. His answer came pretty late in the program, about 5 minutes before the final reveal of who was going home.

“Let’s check in on the latest situation with our lovely roommates Quentin and Eliot,” Jane said to introduce the clip.

 _“Extremely hot, huh?”_ Eliot said, walking closer to a very nervous-looking Quentin. This time, watching himself onscreen was painful. The feeling was kind of like the secondhand embarrassment he’d always get when watching kissing scenes in movies with his parents. Only in this case, it was the whole world instead of his parents, and it was himself instead of some random actor. As soon as the kiss happened, the audience certainly had a reaction, though it wasn’t a universally agreed upon one. There was a mixture of awws, squeals, gasps, and, Quentin swore, at least a few groans. Well, you couldn’t please everyone.

The unlucky pair that ended up going home was Harriette and Zelda. Quentin felt a little bad that he hadn’t really interacted with either of them much. They’d seemed like interesting people, and super knowledgeable about magic books judging from the few conversations with them that he’d been around for. Quentin wondered whether he should be putting in more effort to meeting the other contestants. But with all the rehearsals and this whole plan with Eliot, he didn’t think he had the mental space for too much else.

Josh and Fen were announced as the decorating contest winners, which didn’t come as a shock. Their cake had been the most well-executed by far. 

When they got back to the cottage, Quentin headed straight for the bar. Julia sat on the couch opposite, focusing intently on her phone.

“Oh my god, Q, #queliot is trending on Tumblr,” Julia said, handing him her phone.

“Queliot?” Quentin asked confused, sitting down next to Julia. He looked at the screen to see a series of gifs showing his and Eliot’s kiss. Quentin’s mouth fell open in shock. He knew people did this type of thing for tv characters, but he and Eliot were real people. This felt so weird. But then, what had he expected? After all, wasn’t this the whole point?

Eliot and Margo seemed to sense something interesting going on, likely because of the look on Quentin’s face, and came over to look at the phone screen.

“Hot,” Margo said simply.

“I agree,” Eliot said calmly, “and look, they even got my good side.”

“Oh, baby,” Margo said, cupping El’s face, “you know you don’t have a bad side.”

“Too correct, Bambi,” Eliot said, spinning her around.

“Um,” Quentin said dumbly, still processing.

Julia had taken back her phone and was scrolling through posts. There were other gifs of them interacting, not just the kiss. People were even analyzing their facial expressions. In one, someone had zoomed in on Quentin’s face during Eliot’s first performance with the comment _“It’s just so sweet, he’s so clearly in awe of this beautiful man and his stage presence ~~and his skill with his fingers~~_.” 

Oh dear. Quentin practically leaped off the couch. “I’m gonna, uh,” and then he bolted upstairs.

_ _ _ _

“Hey, you feeling ok about everything?” Eliot asked when he came into the room about fifteen minutes later.

“Yeah, sure,” Quentin said, sitting on top of his bed. He protectively crossed his arms over his stomach.

“You kind of ran out on us, there,” Eliot said, raising an eyebrow. “If this is all too weird, we can stop, you know.”

“No, no, I just… it _is_ weird, but. I mean, it seems like it’s working? So, I feel like it’d be stupid to stop.”

“Ok, if you’re sure…” Eliot didn’t look convinced.

“I am,” Quentin said, more confidently.

“Ok, well, maybe we should get our stories straight. They’ll probably interview us about it before next week’s episode.”

“Yeah, sure,” Quentin said, sitting up so his legs were folded beneath him. 

“So, we probably want to stretch this out for a bit longer before emerging as a full-on couple. Maybe we keep it toned down for now, tell them that we haven’t talked about it yet.“

Quentin considered that for a moment. “Is that even believable? I mean, we’re roommates.”

“Oh, trust me Q, it is entirely possible to spend an inordinate amount of time with someone and avoid talking about feelings.” Well, that seemed rather specific. Quentin set the thought aside for later.

“Ok, so uh, maybe just tell me what you want me to say, then?”

“Sure. When Jane asks about us, just say that we haven’t talked about the kiss.” Eliot started pacing back and forth, deep in thought. “You’re not sure what my intentions are – try to subtly hint that you want a relationship without saying it outright. I’ll essentially do the same, and next week when they show the footage that’ll be a perfect lead-in to a formal me-asking-you-out scenario.”

“Ok, sounds like a plan.” Despite the weirdness of the whole situation, Quentin was sort of enjoying plotting everything out with Eliot. This was actually getting kind of fun. 

_ _ _ _

The theme for the third week’s performance episode was _trinity_. Julia and Quentin had practiced a card trick they were pretty excited for, involving three spectators. The first volunteer would name any playing card, and the next two would each select any number between 1 and 52. Quentin and Julia would then show the spectators a deck of cards, where they’d (seemingly) randomly written a different number on the back of each card, between 1 and 52. They would next reveal three predictions written on a chalkboard:

  1. 33
  2. 8 of diamonds
  3. King of Spades



Going through the deck would reveal that the number on the back of the first spectator’s freely chosen card was indeed 33. The card that had the second spectator’s number on the back would be the 8 of diamonds, and the card with the third spectator’s number written on it would be revealed as the King of Spades. It was one of Quentin’s favorite effects in card magic. The secret involved the use of a trick deck that appeared completely normal, even to expert magicians. Even though the judges would likely be able to figure out how the trick worked, Quentin remembered his complete and total befuddlement when seeing it for the first time. He knew it would be a crowd pleaser.

Julia and Quentin were going last this time. They showed his and Eliot’s interviews right before Eliot and Margo performed, a little over halfway through the show.

 _“So, everyone is dying to know, what’s going on with you and Eliot after that kiss?”_ Jane’s voice could be heard asking Quentin in the clip.

“ _I mean, we haven’t exactly talked about it yet? I don’t know, it just… happened and then… that was it. I should like, probably bring it up, it’s just, I’m not sure he wants to talk about it? I mean, he’s really popular with guys so uh, he was probably just having a bit of fun. Which um, you know, which is fine…”_ Quentin had done his best to sound just a little sad at the end, and watching it now, he thought it came across ok.

 _“Ah yes, the enigma of Quentin Coldwater,”_ Eliot began. _“I mean, look, I should probably talk to him first before saying all this stuff in an interview but… what I will say is, he hasn’t seemed to want to talk about it? I guess I’m a little worried I scared him off. I maybe came on too strong, I don’t know… I guess we’ll see.”_

It then cut to Quentin and Eliot eating cake. Oh no. And, yup, there it was, the frosting-on-the-lip-wipe. And, _oh my God_ , had Quentin really looked like that when licking the frosting off his finger? It was more like _sucking_ the frosting off while eye fucking Eliot, it was positively obscene. He actually buried his head in his hands, he couldn’t take watching another second of this.

As soon as the clip ended, Jane sarcastically said, “Yeah, it sure seems like _Eliot_ is the one coming on strong here,” which got a big laugh. Quentin wanted to curl up and die. Fortunately, he had three acts to recover from his humiliation before it was their turn to perform.

Idri and Ess went right before them, performing a hilarious variation on Three-Card Monte. That was going to be difficult to follow, but Quentin was feeling confident.

Q and Julia started by selecting three audience members and invited them on stage. Julia started with the first spectator. “I want you to get an image in your mind of any card from a deck of cards. Once you can really picture it, say it out loud for us.” 

While this was happening, Quentin went to get the deck of cards. As soon as he took the deck out of the box, he stared at it in disbelief. _Oh shit._ There were no numbers written on the back of these cards. Not only that, but this wasn’t even the right type of deck. While their trick deck _looked_ normal, it didn’t _feel_ normal to a trained magician. This was just an average deck of playing cards. Quentin frantically searched around the table, wondering if there was some mistake, if an extra deck had been put here by accident and he was missing something. The rest of the table was completely empty. 

“I’ll do the nine of hearts,” the spectator said.

“An excellent choice!” Julia was about to ask the second spectator to name a number. Quentin had to think quickly. There was absolutely no way they could perform their original trick, so they would have to do something else. The audience had already seen the deck of cards on stage, and nothing makes an audience suspicious of a deck like saying, _Whoops, wrong deck, I’ll be back in a few minutes with the right one!_ They needed to change gears very quickly.

“Now we’d like you to name – “

“A suit,” Quentin interrupted quickly. Julia shot him a confused look. He tried his best to communicate _just trust me_ with his eyes. “Any suit, hearts, diamonds, spades, or clubs.”

He didn’t have the proper time to explain to Julia what was going on, so he quickly walked up to her and whispered, “Wrong deck, flip-over trick.“

When they’d been rehearsing, Julia and Quentin had come up with several different ideas to match the theme. Quentin hoped that ‘flip-over trick’ would successfully communicate to Julia which trick he was using as an alternative. It was the only one they’d considered that used a normal deck. The problem was, the full effect required some setup. As it stood, they would be forced to only perform part of the trick, which meant only finding two selected cards instead of three. It wouldn’t match the theme and they hadn’t practiced their patter, but it was all Quentin could think to do under this kind of pressure.

“Spades,” the spectator said.

“Ok, great! Now,” Quentin turned to the third spectator, “we’d like you to name any card value.” They chose Jack. “Perfect, so now we have the Nine of Hearts and the Jack of Spades. Two cards that the three of you selected together.” This was all quite a stretch. There was no reason for them to have selected the cards this way, but this was the situation they were stuck with. Julia still seemed hesitant to say anything, unsure how exactly he was planning on making this work. Quentin plowed onwards.

“Ok, so that was a completely free selection. Now I want you,” he gestured to the first spectator, “to just locate those two cards in the deck. Then hand one to each of the others.” He took out a pen that he fortunately kept in his pocket. “Now each of you, sign those cards.” To be honest, this was also a stretch. There wasn’t really a need to have the spectators sign the cards. Quentin was trying to both stall for time, and make it seem like there was any kind of reason to have chosen three spectators instead of two.

Quentin walked over to Julia and whispered, “I’ll do the sleights. You run the shuffle.” Julia nodded. Even though he and Julia had only been working together professionally for 6 months, it had always been easy for them to communicate without using too many words.

“Ok,” Julia said, motioning for the spectators to come to the table. “Now hold onto your signed cards, and just mix up the rest of the deck. Make some cards face up, others face down, make it a big mess!” This part could have been made to be more amusing with some planning. Ah, well.

Quentin came over to gather up the cards. There was an awkward silence for a moment when neither of them spoke, then they both tried talking at the same time.

“So now –“

“If you could both –“

They each stopped talking abruptly. Julia nodded towards Quentin, letting him take over.

“So now I’m going to run through the cards, and as you can see, they’re a big mess. Some face up, some face down. Now just insert your signed cards into the deck as I go through, face up or face down.” Apparently Quentin’s instructions hadn’t been clear enough, as both spectators tried to immediately stick their cards into random positions in the deck. Quentin pulled back and tried again.

“Let’s have you go first. _As I go through_ , insert your card.” This time it worked, with the spectator putting their card in the right place as Quentin ran through the deck. The other spectator followed suit.

“Ok, now I’m not even going to touch the deck!” Quentin set it down on the table. He paused to let Julia make the big reveal. She took the cue.

“If I spread out the cards, you’ll see that all of them are now face down, except for your two signed cards!” The audience applauded as they waited for the judges’ verdicts.

“I mean,” Penny started. He was laughing, as if in disbelief of their idiocy, “What even was the point of having three spectators? You brought them all up, and then had them collectively choose two cards? What? The theme this week was _tri-ni-ty_.” He said the syllables slowly, as if explaining something to a five-year-old. “Three. What, so you thought you if you had three people stand uselessly on the stage for the whole act it would trick us into thinking you’d thought about the theme? And what the hell was that performance?” Yikes. As it moved to Alice, Quentin swore he heard Penny mutter “Pathetic” under his breath.

“I’m afraid I have to agree with Penny there. Your idea was actually pretty good, but the way you performed it was just clunky.” Disappointing Alice made Quentin feel like a boulder had just been shot at his stomach.

Kady went last. “Honestly, yeah, what they said. I don’t really want to spend more time on this. Like, you did a good trick. But you didn’t do the trick well.” She shrugged.

“Ok, well thank you Quentin and Julia for that performance,” Jane said, sounding sympathetic. “Remember, the judges get to decide the bottom three, but America, it’s up to you to save your favorites! Make sure you vote tonight, and find out Friday who’s going home. Good night everyone!”

The audience applauded one last time for everyone, and then the lights in the house came up. The rest of the contestants started walking towards the bus, but Quentin and Julia stayed put.

“It was Marina, I know it was,” Julia said. “I saw you put that deck in the table after practicing with it, it was the right one. She switched it out.”

“How fucked are we? Can we just tell the judges what happened? I mean, it’s not our fault, I’m sure if they hear what happened they’d be able to help us out somehow.”

Julia nodded tightly. “Yeah, yeah ok, let’s go.”

They headed towards the door across the stage leading to the backstage area the judges had exited to. They decided to approach Alice, since out of the three she seemed the least intimidating.

“Hi um, Alice, can we talk to you for a second?” Quentin said.

“Um, I’m not really supposed to talk to contestants individually…”

“Right, but um, see, this is kind of important.” Quentin said, waving his hands around in the air.

Julia took over. “Someone messed with our props before we went out on stage, and we’re pretty sure we know who it was.”

“Ah, well, for something like that Penny’s the person to talk to. He’s right over there. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” Alice adjusted her glasses, turned, and walked away.

“So, um, should we talk to Penny? The guy seems like kind of a dick,” Quentin said, whispering the last part in case anyone was listening.

“That’s just his stage persona. I’m not letting Marina get away with this just because Penny’s a little scary.”

Julia approached Penny confidently. “Hi, we’d like to talk to you about what happened during our performance.”

Penny snorted. “You can’t just come crying to the judges to ‘explain yourselves’ when you get a bad review. Whining? Not gonna get you anywhere.”

“No, that’s not… Please,” Julia begged. “The deck we took out of that table on stage was not the same one we put there earlier this evening. We had a different trick planned. And I know that Marina switched it out, there has to be security footage or something -“

“Look,” Penny interrupted, not looking impressed, “I don’t give a rat’s ass about whatever drama you two have cooked up with Marina and Pete. I care about quality performances. Which yours was not. It’s _your_ job to inspect your props before going out there. If something goes wrong on stage, that’s on you. Now I’m going home.”

Quentin and Julia gaped after Penny as he walked away. “This is bullshit!” Julia shouted. “He didn’t even fucking listen to us! Does this competition not care at all about people cheating?”

“I know Jules, this is super unfair. But maybe he has a point, I mean, I should have checked the deck before we went out.”

“No, no this is _not_ our fault, Q. Fucking Marina.”

“We should get back, there’s nothing more we can do here,” Quentin said. Julia stood for a moment, but finally gave a single nod in agreement. 

_ _ _ _

“Quentin,” Eliot approached with a warm smile when they got back to the cottage. “I’ve been looking for you. You have a second?”

“Yeah, now’s really not a good time Eliot.” Quentin said, his eyes darting across the room to look for any sign of Marina.

“Ok, um, is there something going on?” 

“I said now’s not a good time!” Quentin’s voice was louder and harsher than he intended. He tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. “Sorry, look, I just…”

“Ok, no, no that’s fine, um…"

Eliot was interrupted by the sound of shouts coming from the kitchen. Julia had found Marina. Quentin quickly hustled in that direction, with Eliot following closely behind.

“We know it was you, Marina! Are you really that threatened by us, that you have to stoop to cheating to try to get us kicked off?

“Julia, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. And I’m sure if there was any merit to your theory, well, someone would have contacted me by now to kick me out for cheating.” She was so casual about it all.

“Yeah, well. We’re going to prove it was you.”

“You do you, but spend all your time chasing your ridiculous theory, and you won’t have any time for rehearsal left over. If you even get another performance to rehearse for, after how tonight went…”

“You fucking asshole!“

“Woah, woah, woah, timeout,” Eliot said, sensing the situation starting to get out of hand. “Let’s maybe not attack each other in the kitchen? I eat here, and blood is really annoying to properly clean.” Julia glared at Eliot incredulously. She was not in the mood.

“Well, on that note,” Marina said, “I’ll be upstairs, _roomie._ Try not to kill me in my sleep, ok?”

“I hate her so fucking much!” Julia pounded her fists on the countertop.

Margo had walked in just in time to witness that last exchange. “Ok, would someone please explain what in Houdini’s secret-key-ridden anus is going on here?”

“Uh, the deck that we used onstage wasn’t the right one. We had to kind of, well, improvise a completely new trick, and Julia thinks – “

“No, _Julia_ _knows_ that it was Marina,” Julia interrupted. “She swapped out the decks. And I’m going to find a way to prove it, I just. I just need to think. I’m going for a walk.” And with that, Julia left the cottage. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quentin and Julia's planned triple-prediction trick: https://youtu.be/FH0yGsU9poA
> 
> Quentin and Julia's actual trick (this is actually an amazing performance, worth watching!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCFXV6o7cro


	5. The Box

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, the fic's rating has changed to explicit. While this chapter doesn't contain anything explicit (sorry!) I figured I'd change it now rather than later. Also, there are now mood boards by @theauditty!

_ _ _

Quentin and Julia had been told to be downstairs at 1PM for Thursday’s activity. When Quentin got there, he was surprised to see that it was just him, Julia, Margo, and Eliot.

“Good, you’re all here,” Jane said. “Quentin and Julia, you’ll be working with Margo and Eliot for this mini-competition. It has to happen on stage, so only one group can do it at a time. We’ll take the bus over and I’ll explain everything there!”

When they arrived, they saw a person-sized box on stage with some holes cut out around the sides.

“You’ll be using this prop to make a performance involving all 4 of you," Jane explained. "You have two hours to prepare, and then you’ll have one shot to perform it for the camera. The audience will vote for their favorite performance online. The prize for the winning two pairs is the opportunity to perform in the Welters Exhibition. Your time starts… now!”

Damn. The Welters Exhibition was a huge event that happened every year with performances by some of the best magicians in the world. It was a big deal to get to go, even if it was likely just as a shorter act to warm up the audience. Whether or not Julia and Quentin were going home tomorrow, this was at least something they had a chance to gain from this competition.

They all approached the box to examine it. Quentin could see that it was meant to be used for a pretty standard stage illusion. Traditionally, the magician would reveal the empty box and help their assistant get inside. They would then rearrange the box components in ways that would appear to be physically impossible for the person to stay intact, but the assistant would stick their arms and legs out of the box at various points to signal that they were still alive and well. Finally, the magician would open the box to reveal that it was empty, and the assistant would appear somewhere, maybe in the audience, maybe on stage. Exactly how it was performed could vary, but the overall effect remained the same. Their challenge was to do something creative with the performance aspect that would get them the most votes.

Part of the secret was that a second assistant would start the trick inside the box, unseen by the audience. “Ok,” Quentin started. “So, we could start just practicing this the standard way to get used to the prop. Julia and Margo, you’re the smallest, so um, it probably makes the most sense for you guys to be in the box. Eliot and I will introduce –“

“Oh, hell no.” Margo interrupted. “I am not going to be the traditional beautiful female assistant who hides in a box for 90% of the act while the men get all the glory of making me appear. Fuck that. Quentin, Eliot, you two go inside the box.”

“Margo,” Quentin started to protest, “Eliot’s over 6 feet tall, he’ll barely fit.”

“Nope, uh-uh. Not going to hear it. We’re gender-swapping this act, end of discussion. Now get in the box, Coldwater.”

Quentin sighed. Margo was scary. He looked at Eliot for support, but he just shrugged and headed toward the box.

It truly was an incredibly tight fit. Their bodies were pressed right up against each other. For lack of a better position, Eliot’s chin was resting on top of Quentin’s head. Quentin was trying not to rest his head against Eliot’s chest, but the effort of it was hurting his neck too much, so he finally gave in. Neither of them seemed to know what to do with their arms.

Quentin could hear Margo talking to Julia, but it was muffled coming from outside the box. Which was unfortunately not giving Quentin anything else to focus on besides the warmth of Eliot’s body against his.

Suddenly, the box shifted as someone on the outside slid the half Eliot was standing on downwards. It put Eliot’s head at roughly the same height as Quentin’s, his lips barely an inch away. He didn’t even have the physical capability to politely lean back to give them both more space. He could feel Eliot’s breath, light and warm against his lips. It was fairly dark in the box, but enough light was coming through the side holes to see Eliot’s eyes looking at him with hugely blown pupils. Quentin knew it was just the natural reaction eyes had to adjust to the darkness, but that didn’t make the sight of it any less hot. And… _shit_. Quentin felt the beginning of what was bound to become an unconcealable problem in these close quarters. He pulled his hips back as much as he could, begging Eliot with his mind not to lean forward anymore and feel what was going on there.

Suddenly, the door to the box swung open. “What the hell, that was your cue.” Margo looked them both over. “You’re not here to bang, you’re here to stick your skinny limbs out of the box at the right time. Now get it right!” She slammed the door.

Eliot chuckled softly. “Better do what she says, we do not want to get on Bambi’s bad side.”

\- - -

They’d come up with a decent act that allowed each of them to be seen by the audience at some point. 2 hours had been a ridiculously short time limit, but Quentin was pretty proud of what they’d accomplished. They’d just arrived back at the cottage. But before Quentin walked through the front door, Eliot pulled him aside. “Just wanted to check in, would now be an ok time? For the uh, formal me-asking-you-out?”

Quentin blinked. “I might not even still be in this competition after tomorrow, El. There might not even be a point.”

“Don't doubt yourself so much, Quentin” Eliot said. “Feel free to bring that up though, actually, when I ask. It kind of makes the whole thing seem more romantic.” Great, Quentin was oh so glad his looming elimination would help sell this whole thing as more romantic. 

They walked inside, and Quentin didn’t really know what he was supposed to do. He figured going over to the couch couldn’t be a particularly bad idea. Eliot went into the kitchen where Quentin could see Fen animatedly talking to Idri and Fray. Idri was at least pretending to pay attention, but Fray seemed to be looking for any chance to escape. She latched onto Eliot as soon as he approached. Quentin sighed and found himself a book to look through. Guess he was going to be stuck waiting for a while. 

Finally, a large shadow fell over the page of Quentin’s book, and he looked up to see Eliot standing there, unashamedly observing him. He shut the book and stood up.

“Hey,” he started, but didn’t really know what else to say. Eliot had said he would take the lead, right?

“Hey, Q. Do you have a minute?” Quentin nodded. He knew what was coming. He knew exactly what was coming. So why was his heart beating so fast? Goddamnit.

“I um,” Eliot started, then he let out a breathy laugh. “I feel like we’ve been getting along really well, you know. As roommates… friends…”

“Right…” Quentin said, playing dumb.

“And I know we haven’t really, uh, talked much. You know since…”

“Since you kissed me and then ran upstairs without saying anything?” Sure, Eliot made Quentin nervous as hell. But there was no way he was going to miss this opportunity to call him out. Even if it all was pretend, America was going to see a version of Quentin who had at least an ounce of confidence.

Eliot let out a surprised laugh, his eyes crinkling in the most adorable way. Quentin smirked in victory.

“Yeah, uh. Well I figured I’d say something about that now.”

Quentin nodded. “Ok…”

Eliot stepped forward and took both of his hands in his. “Quentin, I would really love to date you. Whatever that means while we’re on this crazy show, but also after. I mean, if you want.”

Remembering what Eliot had said when they were outside, Quentin replied, “Eliot, I don’t even know if I’m going to still be here after tomorrow.”

Eliot smiled, running a hand gently across his face to move a stray strand of hair behind his ear. “I don’t care, Quentin. Even if you go home tomorrow, I still want to give this a shot. I’ve never really felt this kind of… a connection with someone so fast before. Except maybe Margo, of course.”

Quentin forced a smile. What Eliot was saying was nice. It was really nice. He just wished he’d actually been saying it to _Quentin_ , not the cottage cameras.

“Yeah. Ok, I’d um. I’d like that.”

Eliot leaned in slowly, and Quentin’s heart thudded against his chest in anticipation of another kiss. But Eliot paused just shy of making actual contact.

“I’ll let you finish your reading,” he murmured, his lips making the faintest contact with Quentin’s as he said it. Quentin literally felt weak at the knees. So that’s where that expression came from. “I’ll see you later.” Eliot went upstairs, and Quentin sat back down. He picked up his book and proceeded to stare at the same page for half an hour.

When Quentin noticed Marina coming downstairs, he decided to take the opportunity to go check in with Julia.

“Q, great, we should talk strategy for tomorrow night,” she said when she greeted him at her bedroom door.

“Umm, ok, sure. What does that mean?” He stepped into the room and they sat down on opposite ends of the bed. 

“I mean, if we get announced as the pair going home, I’m thinking we expose Marina in that final speech they let the losers make.”

“Woah, Jules. I feel like that’s taking things a bit far, don’t you?”

Julia’s voice was hard. “No Quentin, I don’t. I think Marina and Pete took things a bit far when they literally sabotaged us. Or do you disagree with that?”

“Of course I don’t disagree, it’s just. We have our reputations to think of, Jules.”

Julia laughed. “Right. Our reputations. Where you’re the classically trained magician with a Brakebills degree to fall back on, and I’m, what? The sidekick who’s only ever performed on the street? I _don’t have_ a reputation to think of, Quentin.”

“Jules, that’s not what I’m saying. I just mean, it doesn’t look good to accuse someone of something like that on live tv, ok? We analyzed similar cases in a performer’s etiquette class I took and - ”

Julia laughed without an ounce of humor. “Of course. You know better than me because you’re just so damn well educated. I clearly know nothing and should just let people walk all over me because my fancy partner over here _took a class_ teaching him how to be fucking pushover.”

Quentin sighed. “Jules, I thought we were over this. I’m not trying to fucking rub Brakebills in your face. I’m just saying I have reasons to believe this is a bad idea. I get it, it sucks. It sucks that someone sabotaged us. It sucks even worse that it’s Marina, who has a history of doing this kind of thing to you. But we’ve talked to the judges about it already, and if _they_ don’t believe us, I highly doubt America will have any reason to.”

“I think you should leave, Quentin,” Julia said, turning away from him.

“Fine. But we’re not done talking about this.”

As he came out of Julia’s room, he ran into Eliot coming out of Pete and Humbledrum’s room.

“Uh, hey,” Quentin said, a bit confused. “Getting tips on the best honey brands?” Making fun of Humbledrum was always fair play. He peered through the doorway, but only saw Pete in the room.

Eliot chuckled. “No, just checking in with Pete about something.” Huh. He didn’t offer up any more explanation, and Quentin figured it wasn’t really his business anyway.

“You find anything useable in that book you were reading?” Eliot asked as they got to their room.

“It’s not really gonna matter anyway, I’m probably going home tomorrow,” Quentin muttered.

“Like I said, Q, I wouldn’t be too sure. The judges weren’t happy, obviously. But Quentin, you have to know that the audience loves you.”

“Loves _us_ , you mean.”

Eliot grinned. “Sure, but you’re 50% of that. This kind of scenario is exactly the reason we’re doing this whole plan in the first place. No need to be bitter that it’s finally getting its chance to prove useful.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just… I’m not in a great mood right now.” Fighting with Julia had been mentally exhausting.

“That’s fair. You want me to leave you alone for the night? I totally get it.”

Quentin thought for a moment. “No, um. I think. It’s a nice… distraction. Talking to you. It at least keeps me out of my own head.”

And so they talked. Well, mostly Eliot talked and Quentin listened. It was largely gossip about people he didn’t know particularly well at Brakebills, but it was honestly still pretty fun. Eliot was great at telling stories.

“…so anyway, Illusions 1 is maybe the only example of magic techniques that are useful for shit that really matters,“ Eliot finished. 

“You telling Coldwater about the time we stole from Fogg’s liquor stash and hid it with mirrors?” Quentin looked up to see Margo inviting herself into the room, bottle of wine in tow. “Scooch over,” she said, making herself comfortable on Quentin’s bed, sitting next to him while they both leaned against the headboard. She stuck her arms out towards Eliot, and he smiled fondly.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked Quentin pointedly, making a show of his superior manners. Margo stuck out her tongue.

“Yeah, uh, sure,” Quentin said. Eliot sat in front of Margo, letting her wrap her arms around him. And they just all… hung out. At some point wine was poured. It wasn’t enough to make anyone drunk, but Quentin at least felt a bit tipsy. Margo took over most of the storytelling, with Eliot providing color commentary. Despite the terrifying day ahead of him, Quentin actually had fun. But it would have been better if Julia had been there, too.

\- - -

The next morning, Julia knocked on Quentin’s door with a plate full of cinnamon buns. “Truce?” She said with a soft smile. Eliot had been asleep, but rolled over to look at Julia.

“Are those… cinnamon buns?” He asked hopefully.

Julia rolled her eyes. “You can have one.”

Eliot slid out of bed and happily trotted over, grabbing one before reconsidering and grabbing a second. He politely exited the room to give them some space, probably to go have breakfast with Margo. 

“I’m sorry,” Julia said as they settled down on Quentin’s bed. “I know I can be touchy about Brakebills. Sometimes you were just kind of an ass about it. But I know you aren’t trying to be, now.”

“Thanks. And I’m sorry for being an ass about it sometimes.”

“I think you’re right, though,” Julia said. Quentin raised his eyebrows in surprise. When Julia was that adamant about something, it was usually impossible to change her mind. “I thought about it and, it’s not going to look good for us to do that on live tv. If we can ever find proof, maybe we can do something about it later. But, well, we’ll just deal with the results when they’re announced. Whatever they are.”

\- - - 

It wasn’t a shock when Quentin and Julia were the first pair revealed to be in the bottom 3. Still, Quentin felt his heart sink when it was announced. To make matters worse, they had to go sit in a specially designated part of the stage for the rest of the night. That protocol had seemed like a perfectly natural part of the show before, but now that Quentin was experiencing it firsthand, it felt completely humiliating.

They made a big show out of the footage where Eliot asked Quentin out. He would have felt embarrassed, but he didn’t have the space for any emotions besides anxiety over whether they were going home. The other pairs in the bottom 3 were Tick and Benedict, and Poppy and Sebastian. After a montage of highlights made up of cottage footage combined with funny rehearsal moments from the box routines, Jane had the bottom 3 all stand in the center of the stage.

“The first of these pairs to be safe, with the highest number of audience votes, is… Quentin and Julia!”

Quentin’s first reaction to hearing their names was to panic – had she actually been announcing the pair going home? Had he misheard? He looked at Julia for confirmation, and she wrapped him in a big hug.

“You two can go back to your seats. Who will we be saying goodbye to this week? You’ll find out after the break!”

Even though Quentin was relieved, his body hadn’t quite caught up. He could still feel his heart pounding in his chest and his legs were shaking as he sat back down with the rest of the contestants. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Eliot giving him a smile.

“See? What’d I tell you?”

Quentin took a few deep breaths and finally started to calm down. His heart sped right back up again, though, right after the break, when he, Julia, Eliot, and Margo were announced as the winners of that week’s challenge. Things were really looking up for them. Not so much for Tick and Benedict, who ended up getting sent home.

\- - -

That night, Q was just getting into bed when Eliot sat up to face him. “So, I’ve been meaning to ask. How would you feel about… taking this all a bit further?”

Quentin felt his heartrate quicken. “Um, what do you mean exactly?” They’d already kissed, what else could they really do in public spaces anyway? Unless Eliot was talking about… making this more real? But no, Quentin shouldn’t allow himself wishful thinking like that.

“Oh, you know, couple stuff. Holding hands, cuddling on the couch, making out…”

Making out? Oh no no no. Well, oh _yes_ , but also, oh _no_. Quentin wanted, more than almost anything, to make out with Eliot. Anything save, well, _more_ than making out with Eliot. But if they did that, then Quentin would know what he was missing after the competition ended and they both went their separate ways. Their first and only kiss had been, well, _something_ , but that had been an isolated incident. Something Quentin would be able to forget about one day. Maybe. That day was certainly not today. But if they started making out regularly? Or even just once honestly…

But Quentin couldn’t really think of an excuse not to. It made sense. They had to keep escalating things to keep the viewers invested in them as a couple. If Quentin even managed to stay in the competition. Yet again, Quentin’s raw curiosity and desire were winning out over his better judgement.

“Umm, yeah, that uh, makes logical sense,” Quentin said. “Sure.”

“Ok,” Eliot said casually. “Good. And obviously, feel free to say no in the moment if I start to do something you don’t like. I know the cameras are always watching and all, but your comfort is way more important.” Quentin smiled and nodded, and then Eliot turned out the lights. 

\- - -

Quentin certainly wasn’t spending most of his days leading up to the fourth performance wondering when Eliot was next going to kiss him. He had more important things to focus on. Perfecting a new sleight for their next act, obviously. That was much more important to do than stare at Eliot’s lips. And writing their patter, that was definitely more pressing than memorizing Eliot’s perfect jawline. And coordinating their costumes. Quentin didn’t usually care about that part, but certainly that was far more vital to vividly daydream about than the memory of Eliot’s body pressed up against his in that box, wondering what it would have felt like with far fewer clothes…

Quentin was definitely focused. In fact, he was so focused that Tuesday evening while everyone else was having some drinks to relax after an intense week of practices, Quentin was on the couch reading a book on advanced card sleights. But he’d be out of his mind to deny that he became significantly less focused when Eliot slid right up next to him, their legs lightly touching.

“Are you ever not reading?” Eliot said. Quentin looked up, trying his best to look annoyed.

“Do you ever read?” he challenged. Eliot rolled his eyes.

“Put the book away Quentin,” he said, his voice low. Oh. Well that tone was new. Quentin obeyed, setting the book on the coffee table.

“I feel like I haven’t seen you much this week,” Eliot murmured, pushing a stray lock of Quentin’s hair behind his ear. It was a fair point. Quentin had been pretty busy with rehearsals. And to be honest, maybe part of Quentin had been avoiding Eliot after what they’d discussed. And that feeling in the pit of Quentin’s stomach at the contact of Eliot’s hand on his face was a huge part of why.

Eliot looked at him calmly, searching for something in his eyes, maybe permission? Quentin felt like he should probably say something, but he couldn’t find any words. Eliot was slowly leaning forward, and Quentin closed the distance to press his lips softly against Eliot’s. At the very first point of contact, it was like an electric shock went through him. He had to put as much energy as he could into controlling his own body. Eliot was sitting so close to him, his lap was right there, and all Q wanted to do was climb into it and straddle him.

They were still kissing gently, lips just barely brushing over each other, which was practically torture. Eliot brought a hand up to softly cup Quentin’s face as he finally started to deepen the kiss. Quentin sighed in relief. Before he realized he was doing it, he brought his hand up to Eliot’s shirt collar and started tugging, trying to bring Eliot closer. Eliot smoothly let his tongue slip into Quentin’s mouth, and Quentin had never focused on anything so hard in his life than right now as he willed his body to not just wrap itself completely around Eliot’s, to not start grinding against him in the middle of the living room, to not moan or whimper or do any of the things it was screaming to do.

The pace of the kiss was still painfully slow, every movement of Eliot’s mouth purposeful. He seemed so in control. Meanwhile, Quentin was completely losing it. But Eliot was starting to let loose a little, surely all for the show of it. He brought his other hand up to Q’s hair and started tugging at it, just like their first kiss, and he hated Eliot for it because of how fucking good it felt. But a few moments later, Eliot’s hand was gone from his face, the cool surrounding air hitting his cheek like a slap.

But almost immediately, Eliot’s hand was grasping his own, and he was tugging on Q to stand up, all while not breaking the kiss. He started lightly pushing Quentin towards the stairs, getting him up against the wall by the banister briefly and running his hands down Quentin’s body from his shoulder down to right below his hips, wrapping around as if to grab his ass, before (tragically) pulling the hand away and tugging Quentin up the stairs. Q was insanely turned on. He wasn’t thinking about anything besides the feel of Eliot’s lips, his tongue, his hands.

They clumsily made their way up, still kissing as Eliot opened the door to their room. Quentin imagined Eliot pushing him onto his bed, imagined taking off Eliot’s vest and unbutton his shirt and running his hands over his chest, imagined Eliot kissing his neck and moaning into it. They tumbled inside, with Eliot closing the door sharply with his foot.

And then, as soon as the door shut, Eliot was pulling away. Not even just pulling away, he actually turned a full 180 degrees and started pacing in a slow semicircle, finally turning back to face Quentin from several feet away.

“Nice work,” Eliot said, placing his hands on his hips. Like they’d just gotten a good grade back for a school project.

“Uhh, thanks?” Quentin said, still catching his breath. Eliot let himself fall back onto his bed. He picked up a stress ball from his nightstand and started casually tossing it in the air.

“So, do you have a plan for making sure Marina doesn’t sabotage you again tomorrow?” Was Eliot really not affected _at all_ by what they’d just been doing? Quentin had been ready to screw the competition, screw pretending to be pretending, and just rip Eliot’s clothes off. And here Eliot was, moments later, chatting about the competition like nothing had even happened. Quentin needed a cold shower, but it would be so obvious to just immediately go into the bathroom after _that_.

“Umm, yeah I guess. We’re going to triple check our props before we go onstage so there won’t be any surprises.”

Eliot nodded solemnly. “Mmm. I’d be surprised if she did it again to be honest, seems like the type of thing where a repeat offense would make them way more likely to be caught.”

Quentin nodded along, barely listening. Eliot’s shirt collar was still a bit messed up from where Quentin had tugged on it, and he could see a tiny patch of dark chest hair peeking out. Quentin realized his mouth was hanging open as he stared, and snapped his jaw shut.

“Uh, so you guys ready for tomorrow?” This was how conversations worked, right? If someone asked you a question you were supposed to ask one back?

“I think so, yeah,” Eliot said with a faint smile. “It might not live up to Thursday’s _great escape_ , but it should be good.” Quentin laughed, remembering the ridiculousness of that box act. He was still just standing by the door awkwardly. Eliot wasn’t looking in his direction though, he was just watching the ball as he threw it up and down.

“What did you do before Brakebills?” Quentin asked. He didn’t know where the question came from. But he’d always been curious about the past of this man who’d always seemed larger than life. If Eliot was surprised by the question, he didn’t show it.

“I did my undergrad in acting. I’ve always wanted to be a performer of some kind, but then I discovered magic and started doing it at college parties, just for fun. And people seemed to really love it, so I started to get more serious about it.”

Acting. Well that made a lot of sense. Quentin tried not to feel even more disappointed than he already was. “I majored in philosophy.” Eliot raised an eyebrow and turned to finally look at Quentin.

“Well that doesn’t seem related to magic at all, but you know, I’m actually not that surprised,” he laughed lightly.

Quentin finally settled down to sit on his bed. They talked for a while, and Quentin found himself wanting to know everything about Eliot. He seemed happy enough to talk about his time in undergrad, but finding out anything before that proved to be challenging. All Eliot would say was that he was from Indiana, which Quentin hadn’t expected and just made him more curious.

It almost made it worse that it seemed like Eliot was genuinely interested in being Quentin’s friend. Quentin knew that was stupid. He _wanted_ to be friends with Eliot. Making an actual friend was so much more than he’d ever expected from an experience like this. And Eliot had this skill of making him feel completely at ease when they talked, bringing him out of his head in a way that was usually so hard for Quentin. But he wanted so much more with Eliot, and the knowledge that he couldn’t actually have that, all while pretending he could, was becoming maddening.

Quentin woke up in the middle of the night painfully hard. Making sure Eliot was still asleep, he quietly slipped into the bathroom to take care of it. And if he thought only of Eliot’s soft curls, perfect eyes, long fingers, and insanely hot chest hair, well, no one needed to know.


	6. Inside

The fourth performance went entirely as expected, thank God. The theme was “inside”. They performed a variation on the classic bill in lemon effect, but with a few twists. Traditionally, the magician takes a dollar bill from a spectator, makes it disappear, and then it reappears inside a lemon that they cut into. In Quentin and Julia’s version, they used a spectator’s cell phone instead of a dollar bill. And a smelly fish instead of a lemon.

They brought a spectator onto the stage and asked him to take out his cell phone. They then had his wife (sitting in the audience) call it so everyone would recognize the ringtone. Quentin then placed the phone into a Styrofoam cup, and actually showed the audience them getting rid of it. He distracted the volunteer and then obviously tossed the phone to Julia, who put it in a bucket. She hooked the bucket onto a rope hanging from the ceiling, and the phone was pulled up and away from view. It was a fun way to let the audience feel like they were in on the secret, while keeping the volunteer clueless.

Quentin then stomped violently on the Styrofoam cup, much to the volunteer’s horror. But of course, the cup was empty. They asked the man’s wife to call his phone, and the ringtone could be heard out in the audience. Underneath a random audience member’s chair was a box. And inside the box was a whole fish on ice.

Julia did the honors of cutting into the fish to reveal the man’s phone inside, sealed safely from the fish guts inside a plastic bag. The audience went wild, and the judges gave them great comments. Even Penny had said, “Man, I have to say, I love the fish. Like, you guys actually put an audience member’s phone. Inside a fish. I love it.”

That night, the typical post-performance ritual of casual drinks turned into something a bit more wild. Fen had stood up on the bus ride home and announced that they were past the halfway mark for the entire show, having just finished the fourth out of eight total performances. And that was apparently making her emotional.

“I just, I’m gonna miss you all so much when we’re not all together! We’ve all become like one big happy family!” Quentin wouldn’t necessarily agree with that. While they’d certainly gotten close through the experience, some people were certainly closer than others, and some people just straight up disliked each other. But it was a sweet sentiment, and very Fen.

Eliot, never one to miss an opportunity to play party host, stood up and announced, “Fen’s right, we’ll never all be together again like this. Tonight, we celebrate our time here together _properly_. No casual drinks while lounging around the living room sofas, no going to bed early. I’m talking a full-blown party.”

“Woo!” Josh shouted. “I’m in!”

Murmurs of ascent to various degrees of excitement could be heard throughout the bus. And so that’s how Quentin ended up, 2 hour later, standing in a corner, cocktail in hand, watching Eliot and Margo dance without a care in the world in the center of a surprisingly populated dance floor. Even Marina, who usually acted like she was above everyone, was letting loose.

The song ended, and Eliot came over to Quentin, visibly tipsy. “Q,“ he said, dragging the letter out. “You’re not following the rules! No standing around, we have to all party!”

“You mean the rules _you_ decided on?” Quentin said. “Besides, I seem to remember you saying no sitting on the couch or going to bed early, so I’m not actually in violation.”

Eliot pouted adorably. “You’re no fun.” Then he leaned in and whispered right against Quentin’s ear. “Come dance with me, Quentin.” Quentin shivered, which Eliot seemed to notice if his smirk was anything to go by when he pulled away. He dragged Q by the hand to the dance floor, and, well, Quentin didn’t put up a fight.

Q mostly stood in place bobbing to the beat while Eliot and Margo danced in circles around him. Julia eventually joined in, grabbing one of Quentin’s hands and raising a pointed, questioning eyebrow. Before Jules had started dating James, Quentin and Julia had decided to go to junior prom together as friends. At the time Quentin had read into it more than he should have, but of course, that particular awkwardness was all ancient history.

Julia had seen how bad high school-Quentin was at dancing, and had decided to help put an end to his misery. “Q, you have to _dance_ to the music, not just stand there and nod!”

“Nodding is dancing! Maybe my dancing is just too sophisticated for you to understand!”

“Ah yes, sophisticated Quentin. Well then, for _my_ benefit, let’s try something a little dumbed down. Here.” She’d taken Quentin’s right hand in hers, lifted their arms up, and then squatted down, dragging Quentin with her. Then she’d switched arms and did it again. They’d started getting really into it, jumping up and spinning around, and it had become one of their signature things to do together at any event with a dance floor.

Now, Julia had her hand in Quentin’s, and he knew exactly what she wanted. He smiled and lifted their hands up, and then dramatically squatted down. They kept going with increasingly exaggerated movements, Quentin actually forgetting that they were surrounded by other people.

“Oh, I am getting in on this,” Q heard Eliot say, and when he looked over Eliot and Margo were copying Quentin and Julia, all of them laughing hysterically. They turned it into a group dance, the four of them grabbing hands in a circle and continuing the motions. But there wasn’t too much space on the dance floor, and on one particular squat Quentin accidentally banged his head against Eliot’s next to him.

“Shit, Q, you ok?” Eliot asked, both concern and amusement on his face as he stepped close to Quentin and cupped his face in his hand, checking that his head was alright.

“Yeah, m’good,” Quentin said in a bit of a daze. And maybe it was the alcohol (ok, it was definitely the alcohol), but Quentin was feeling brave. He was also not exactly thinking clearly. Which definitely was because he’d just hit his head and not at all because Eliot was so close to him and touching his face and looking directly at him with the most beautiful eyes. Well. Regardless of the reason, Quentin leaned in and placed a quick kiss on Eliot’s lips. When he pulled away, Eliot’s eyebrows had shot up to his hairline. When Eliot didn’t react for another few seconds, Quentin started panicking.

“Sorry, I, um –“

“Q, no, it’s fine. That’s uh, that’s exactly the sort of thing we talked about.” Something sounded a bit off with Eliot’s voice, but to be fair, it was hard to hear clearly over the music. And maybe Quentin had imagined it, because Eliot leaned in and kissed him again. It was brief. Not quite as brief as when Quentin had kissed him, but it only lasted about 5 seconds before Eliot pulled away.

“I’ll get you another drink,” he said, and just like that he was gone. Julia raised her eyebrow at Quentin. He just shook his head, and she gratefully didn’t say anything more.

Eliot was gone for a while. Quentin had actually thought about just getting himself his own drink, when Josh came over.

“Hey man, Eliot told me to give this to you,” he said, handing him a cocktail. Quentin looked over to the bar and saw Eliot talking to Idri, which, ok. No, that was fine. This was a party. Eliot could talk to whoever he wanted. And yeah, he’d said he’d get Quentin a drink, but he never promised to be the one to hand-deliver it. There was absolutely no reason for Quentin to be even a little upset. Just because he’d kissed Eliot and he’d all but run away to the bar and never returned didn’t mean anything.

Idri put his hand on Eliot’s wrist. Eliot didn’t pull away. Quentin decided he’d had enough party for one night and went upstairs.

\- - -

Quentin woke up the next day with a massive headache. He rolled over to see Eliot lying in bed looking at his phone.

“Oh, you’re here,” Quentin said.

“Uh, yeah? It is far too early to go downstairs and be a person.” Eliot’s hair was a mess and he had dark circles under his eyes. Quentin wondered if he felt as bad as he did right now.

“No, I just. Um. How was, uh, the rest of the party? You and Idri seemed to be hitting it off?” Quentin was trying his best to sound casual. He could tell he was failing spectacularly.

Eliot gave him a weird smile. “What do you mean by that?”

“I just. I mean. I saw you guys talking for a while, that’s all.”

“Q…” Eliot’s smile got even bigger. “Is that jealousy I’m detecting?” Quentin blushed hard. Eliot at least didn’t sound serious, just teasing. Quentin did his best to recover.

“No, I mean, do what you want, just. It’s not in line with the plan, that’s all. So like, you could at least avoid doing stuff in public?” Quentin knew he sounded annoyed, and he knew he shouldn’t. But his head was killing him, and honestly, what was Eliot thinking flirting with Idri like that in public? When this whole thing was Eliot’s idea in the first place? Couldn’t he just keep it in his pants for a few more weeks so he didn’t cost Quentin the whole competition? And when did Quentin get so angry about this?

“Q. I may have been drunk, but I’m not a complete idiot. I wouldn’t let anything happen between me and Idri, or me and anyone else besides you during this competition. The last thing either of us needs is to bring another contestant into a love triangle. I bet the showrunners would love it, but I can’t see that going well for our votes. Idri may be a huge flirt, and yeah, he’s hot, but I’m not particularly interested in him anyway, competition plan or not.”

Great, so Eliot thought Idri was hot. And what did _particularly_ mean? And why did Quentin’s head hurt so much, how many drinks had he had last night?

“Ok, yeah, sorry,” he muttered. Eliot got out of bed and went over to his dresser.

“But anyway,” Eliot continued brightly, “you’re right about us doing more casual touches and things. Ideally even when we’re in background shots, we should still look like a couple.”

When had Quentin said anything about that? He assumed Eliot was talking about the kiss at the party, but his brain wasn’t really working yet. He just hummed in agreement and closed his eyes while Eliot got ready for the day. When he opened his eyes again after Eliot had left, there was a glass of water and two aspirins waiting for him on the nightstand.

\- - -

Fortunately, today’s activity was taking place in the cottage. Quentin didn’t think his stomach would take too kindly to a bus ride in his current state. Looking around, some people seemed to have fared better than others. Fen looked chipper as always, as did Poppy and Sebastian. Josh and Margo looked completely out of it, and Fray looked even grumpier than usual. She would’ve had to deal with a very energetic Fen that morning.

“Ok everyone,” Jane announced loudly. Quentin did his best to hide his grimace at the sound. “Since it’s October, your challenge today is a pumpkin painting contest! Each of you will paint your own pumpkin, but you should coordinate with your partner so your pumpkins have the same theme. Like always, the audience will vote online. This time, the prize is an invitation to Genji’s retreat.”

Genji’s retreat was basically a week-long party-slash-networking event for magicians. It was run by Alice’s aunt. Really Alice’s whole family was full of great magicians. A lot of big names attended the event every year, and you had to be part of the inner circle to get invited. It was a huge opportunity, although Quentin wasn’t sure the event was really up his alley. He wasn’t huge on networking, or partying. Still, he knew he should try to win.

“You’ll have one hour. Ready, set, go!”

Instead of the mad dash to the kitchen like there had been for the cake decorating contest, everyone just walked at a normal pace to find their stations.

“Alright, um. Do you have any ideas?” Quentin asked. He really wasn’t in the mood for this. Julia fortunately seemed to be a bit more excited. She was obviously exhausted like everyone, but she absolutely loved Halloween. She’d always convinced Q to do partner costumes with her when they were little.

“I feel like we should do something cute, like, a reference to something you know? Maybe a Halloween movie?”

“Hmm, Harry Potter maybe? It’s something everyone would recognize, and it’s not exactly Halloween, but...”

“No, that’s good! Yeah, cute wizard pumpkins!”

“Ok, so who should we actually do? Harry, probably.”

“Yeah, Harry’s easy at least. Glasses, scar, that’s really all you need. What if the other one’s the Griffindor crest? It feels kind of weird just picking another character arbitrarily.”

“Sure. I’ll do Harry?” Julia nodded in agreement, and they got to work. It wasn’t Quentin’s finest pumpkin ever, but it looked recognizable at least. Julia’s was actually great. She’d done a lot of detail work on the crest.

Eliot and Margo had done a Rocky Horror Picture Show theme, which turned out really good. They’d done the iconic lips from the opening, and a well-drawn Dr. Frankenfurter. Fray and Humbledrum had seemingly just gone with “bears” for their theme, with one pumpkin Winnie the Pooh and the other Yogi Bear. Of course. Marina and Pete had gone classic Halloween with a terrifying zombie and a vampire. Josh and Fen had a similar idea, opting for a werewolf theme. One pumpkin was a night sky with a full moon, the other a werewolf face.

After they were finished, Quentin sat down on the couch. Eliot came and sat right next to him, putting an arm over his shoulder and leaning up against him. He gave Quentin a quick kiss on the cheek. Which was fine. Quentin’s heart was definitely beating normally.

“So, Harry Potter nerd, huh?” Eliot said.

“I mean, yeah. But like, everyone likes Harry Potter. Rocky was a really great idea though.”

Eliot hummed. “Going to Rocky is definitely my favorite part of October.” Quentin tried very hard to not imagine Eliot all dressed up for it.

“So I was thinking, we never really had an actual date,” Eliot said.

“Yeah, but I mean, we can’t exactly leave the cottage…” Besides rehearsals and planned outings, and of course emergencies, the contestants were supposed to spend all of their time at the cottage to maximize interactions.

“True, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do something special. Since we have the results show tomorrow and then there will be rehearsals, I was thinking tonight would be good?”

“Yeah, um, ok.”

“And don’t worry, I’ll plan everything.” Well, that should be interesting. Quentin couldn’t help but feel a bit excited, even if it was a fake date.

“Umm, ok yeah. Sure.” Eliot gave Quentin a soft peck on the lips before heading upstairs. He really needed to get used to that happening.

Throughout the day, Eliot kept being affectionate towards Q. Little touches, quick kisses, once he even came up to him and hugged him tightly from behind while he was making a sandwich. And every time, it took Quentin at least a few seconds to recover and act normally. Well, however normal it was possible to act in this situation.

Later that day, Julia sat down next to Quentin on the living room couch. “Q, tonight do you want to watch our next episode of House?” she asked. Somehow both of them had missed the show when it originally aired, and they were slowly making their way through it together now.

“Oh, I can’t tonight, I uh, have a date? With Eliot?” They were in a public space, so Quentin didn’t want to say much more than that.

Julia raised her eyebrows and pulled him into the nook off the living room. By now everyone had discovered that it was the place to go if you didn’t want the cameras to overhear something.

“Ok, you need to explain what’s going on between you guys. Yesterday you were all over him, and today he’s been all over you. Did something actually happen last night?” She sounded so excited, Quentin actually felt bad to have to let her down.

“No, Jules, nothing happened. It’s the same as it’s been. Playing it up for the cameras, that’s all.”

“Q, they don’t show that much footage in those clips. All you really need is like, one moment per week and it would totally be enough.”

“Well, I mean, now that there are fewer contestants there’s more time for showing footage. And it’s good to look like a couple even in background footage.”

Julia smiled. “I don’t know, sure sounds like it’s all just one big excuse for you guys to get to kiss each other all the time. Without communicating about it. Which –“

“I know, I know, we’ve been over this Jules.”

“Quentin. I see the way he looks at you. And the way you look at him. Trust me when I tell you that it’s obvious you’re _both_ into each other.”

“He’s an actor, Jules! He literally went to school for acting, him giving me _looks_ or whatever doesn’t mean anything. But I will think about doing something about it, I promise. After the competition. Maybe.” Quentin left the nook so Julia couldn’t argue anymore.

“But um, could you help me pick out something to wear for tonight?” He asked. Julia rolled her eyes.

“Of course, dum-dum.”

\- - -

Eliot had told Quentin to be ready at 7, so around 6:40 he and Julia went into his room to raid his closet.

“What about this?” Quentin showed Julia a navy sweater.

“Q, why are all of your clothes blue? Let’s find something else, you know, variety.” She pulled out a dark green button-down Quentin hadn’t even remembered bringing. He’d thrown a lot of clothes into his suitcase in case they needed it for performances.

“This! And how about this tie?” She took out a brown tie with thin stripes.

“It’s just a date at the cottage, you think I actually need a tie?”

“Q, El is always wearing a tie. He’ll appreciate it.”

“It doesn’t really matter what he’ll appreciate…”

“Fine, fine, _America_ will appreciate it. Just try it on. And didn’t you get new pants when we did that shopping trip?”

“Oh yeah, good call. Eliot even picked those out for me.” Quentin grabbed the pants and went into the bathroom to change. When he came out, Julia gave a nod of approval.

“Ok then,” he said taking a deep breath. “I guess I’m ready.” Julia made some quick adjustments to his hair, and then they left the room.

Quentin went downstairs to find Eliot sitting in the living room waiting for him. He was wearing a dark purple button-up, dark gray vest, and a light gray tie with a shimmering purple pattern. He stood up to greet Quentin, and Q couldn’t help but notice how tight his pants were, perfectly hugging his ass. Well, damn.

“You look nice,” Eliot said to him, smiling.

“Uh yeah, you too.” Understatement of the century.

Eliot offered out a hand which Quentin took and led him out the backdoor into the yard. He’d set up a blanket with a very short table, just a few inches off the ground, filled with various platters of food.

“I cooked these myself,” Eliot pointed to three dishes on one side of the table, “But everything else is catered from a local restaurant. I wanted to make sure there was a nice variety, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about food preferences.”

“Oh, I’m not picky,” Quentin said. “El, this all looks amazing!” Eliot poured them some wine and raised his glass.

“To still being in the competition, and to finally getting to reconnect.” They clinked their glasses together.

The evening was actually fun. After a while Quentin managed to forget the fake-date aspect of it all, and just talked to Eliot like normal.

“Do you want a white chocolate one or milk chocolate?” Quentin asked when it was time for dessert. There were two different flavors of truffle in the box.

“Oh, doesn’t matter to me, they basically taste the same,” Eliot said.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I said it doesn’t matter.”

“No, I mean, did you just say white chocolate tastes _the same_ as milk chocolate?” Eliot nodded slowly. “Ok, how… you obsess over the taste of your cocktails like crazy. I’ve heard you go on and on about the difference between different types of wine. But this? Even _I_ can tell the difference between white chocolate and milk chocolate!”

Eliot grinned. “Ok, ok, we’re gonna do a blind taste test. Close your eyes, and tell me which one is white chocolate.” Eliot put one truffle into his mouth, and after Quentin swallowed, he put in the other. Quentin may have “accidentally” licked the tips of Eliot’s fingers just a bit. Sue him.

“Mm, definitely the first one.”

“You sure?” Eliot sounded closer.

“Positive.”

“Hmm. Open your eyes, Q.”

Eliot’s face was inches from his, and he slowly leaned in and kissed him. Quentin leaned into it right away. Eliot tasted like roasted mushrooms and red wine, and his tongue was moving so perfectly against his. Eliot pulled back and brushed Q’s hair behind his ear.

“It was the second one,” he said, a glint in his eye, and then moved back to his place on the other side of the table.

“You’re full of shit,” Quentin said, throwing an olive at Eliot.

“I’m sorry, did you just hit me with a projectile? Who knew Quentin Coldwater was so violent.”

Eliot picked up the olive and motioned to throw it back at Q, but nothing hit him. A moment later, the olive appeared to have fallen straight out of the sky into Eliot’s other hand.

“Woah, neat vanish. Can you show it to me?”

“Ok, come over here.” Quentin did as he was told, and Eliot pulled him right up against him, Quentin’s back flush against Eliot’s chest.

“So you take the olive here,” Eliot place the olive into Quentin’s hand and moved his fingers into position.

Quentin giggled giddily. “So you’re gonna move my hands for me? El, that’s so cheesy.”

“Hush now, Q, do you want to learn it or not?” Quentin stayed quiet. Eliot showed him the rest of the movements, and pretty soon Quentin could perform the olive vanish perfectly. Eliot kissed him as a reward.

“We’d better pack up all this food, would you mind helping me take this in?” It only took about 15 minutes to clean everything up, and then they went upstairs to their room. Quentin wasn’t sure what to expect once they were behind closed doors again. That had felt like a real date. Like, it had _really_ felt like a real date. And surely Eliot wouldn’t have bothered to keep it going for so long if he actually didn’t want to spend time with Q, right? They could’ve kept it quick and still given the show enough footage to use, but their date had gone on for nearly 3 hours.

“So uh, that was fun,” Quentin said when they got back to the room.

“Yeah, I think we gave them a lot of material to work with. You’ll have to teach me a trick next time.”

“Yeah, uh, sure.”

“Well, I promised Margo I’d talk to her about an act we’ve been working on, so uh, I’ll leave you to it.” And Eliot was gone. Quentin sighed and laid back on his bed. 

\- - -

In the results episode, they spent quite a while showing footage from Quentin and Eliot’s date. They’d found some particularly good facial expressions to make it look like they were gazing lovingly at each other. Which. Ok, editing a 3-hour date into 2 minutes could really be made to tell any story the producers wanted.

Quentin and Julia were safe that week, but Quentin was nervous when Fen and Josh were announced to be in the bottom 3. With only 7 pairs left, the bottom three was almost half the duos competing. From now on, it would get a lot tougher to avoid. Fortunately, they weren’t sent home, and it was instead Poppy and Sebastian. Eliot and Margo won the pumpkin contest, and they actually both jumped up and squealed when it was announced. Quentin was happy for them, he certainly hadn’t been as excited about the retreat as it seemed they were.

For the rest of the week, Eliot and Quentin kept up their routine of touching and kissing casually in public. Over breakfast, lounging on the couch, before going upstairs to bed… They’d even escalated it to occasional full-on cuddling, with Quentin leaning back against Eliot on the couch, Eliot’s arms around him. Quentin was trying his hardest not to read too much into it all. But it was hard when Eliot looked at him, well… the way he looked at him. It wasn’t always, but sometimes after a kiss or a hair ruffle his eyes just looked so _soft_ it practically made Q melt. 

But every day without fail, as soon as they got into their room Eliot would be distant. He’d make a comment like “Good work today” and he’d ask how Q’s rehearsals were going, but that was it. And most days, he’d leave the room to go talk to Margo about something or other and Quentin would be asleep before he got back.

And so it went, until Tuesday night. Quentin, Julia, Eliot, Margo, Josh, and Fen decided to play a game of poker. They didn’t bet actual money, but decided to make it interesting by allowing everyone to use whatever card sleights they wanted. If they got caught, they’d be out for the round.

Quentin had prepared by planting cards all over his clothes. In his shoes, his socks, his sleeves, even under his collar. And they weren’t just Aces, that would be too obvious. He was prepared for every scenario. Card mechanics were his specialty, and he was not ready to lose.

The game was a ton of fun. At first everyone always had amazing hands resulting in things like 7 Aces in the deck instead of 4, but eventually it became easier to spot everyone’s sleights. Quentin delighted in the fact that he ended up with more chips than anyone else.

After the game, Eliot and Quentin went upstairs, still laughing about some of the ridiculous hands that had happened.

“I can’t believe Josh got away with that! I mean, he switched his entire hand and no one noticed!”

“Honestly,” Eliot said, closing the door to their room behind him, “I think we should all be immediately kicked off the show for not catching that. We can hardly call ourselves magicians.”

“It was a nice career while it lasted.” Quentin put his phone on his dresser. 

“Well, I’m gonna get ready for bed. Goodnight,” Eliot said, giving Quentin a quick kiss on the lips. And then they both froze.

“Um,” Quentin said.

“Uh, sorry, force of habit.” But Eliot was still staring at Quentin’s lips. There was silence for what felt like a full minute as they both looked at each other.

“Um, hey Eliot?” Quentin said, his voice small.

“Yeah, um,” Eliot said, biting his lip. More silence. “I think…”

“Yeah?”

“I think I want to kiss you again.” Eliot leaned in as he said it, so the “again” was mostly swallowed by Q’s mouth.

Eliot pushed Quentin against the wall immediately, any technique cast aside in favor of shoving his tongue into Quentin’s mouth with a hunger Q had not at all expected. In all of his kisses with Eliot so far, Eliot had been reserved, careful, not quite hesitant but almost… calculated. This was anything but that, and Quentin certainly wasn’t complaining.

Quentin put his hands on Eliot’s hips, but Eliot grabbed his wrists and pinned his arms up over his head. Quentin gasped, pulling away briefly from Eliot when his wrists hit the wall, shocked at the way his entire body was reacting to that simple action. He met Eliot’s dark eyes staring right into him, and was overwhelmed at the way Eliot towered over him, trapping him possessively.

Eliot leaned back in to kiss him while grinding against him furiously, their erections rubbing against each other with each thrust of his hips. Quentin felt almost lightheaded at the intensity of what was happening, unable to think about anything except the bursts of pleasure at every moment of friction. Eliot started sucking on his neck while still pinning his arms up, and this was all new territory for them and it felt fucking amazing.

“Oh my God, Eliot, please.” Quentin didn’t even know exactly what he was asking for, but he just wanted more. More of this. More of everything Eliot was doing. Eliot lightly grazed his teeth across Quentin’s skin, and Quentin inhaled a sharp breath.

“ _Fuck_ , El.” Eliot hesitated for a moment, unsure whether what he was doing was ok. Quentin was having none of that. “No. Do not stop. Please.” At that encouragement, Eliot bit down harder on Quentin’s neck, immediately soothing the area with his tongue, probably before it could leave a mark. But it didn’t really matter anyway, they all had access to a complete hair and makeup team who would be able to easily cover anything up.

Quentin couldn’t stop the barrage of words coming out of his mouth. He’d been holding back on saying what he was thinking and feeling about Eliot for so long, and now it was like the dam had burst.

“How are you so. Fucking. Attractive?”

“This feels… I… _Eliot_.”

“Your tongue is so perfect, God, I want, El –“

“You want my tongue?” Eliot said right up against Quentin’s lips, his voice husky. Quentin could only nod in response.

Eliot kissed him deeply, moving one hand to cup Quentin’s face and the other resting on his side, just above his hip. After a moment he started to pull away, but Quentin gripped onto his hair and pulled his head back toward him gracelessly to keep kissing. Without breaking the kiss, Eliot guided Quentin to his bed and lightly pushed him onto his back. Quentin whined at the loss of contact with Eliot’s mouth, but stopped complaining when Eliot climbed on top of him, sitting on his knees to straddle Quentin’s hips. Eliot brushed Q’s hair out of his eyes, and then slowly leaned down to kiss him lightly, teasingly. Quentin’s hips bucked up involuntarily, seeking friction.

“Eager, are we? Patience, Q.”

How the fuck could Eliot go from what he’d been doing just a moment ago to showing this amount of restraint? Dear lord. Eliot tugged gently at Quentin’s earlobe with his teeth, and Quentin whined. He could feel Eliot grin against his skin.

“Please, Eliot, please. I can’t, I need…”

“Ok, Q. It’s ok, I’ll give you everything, I promise.” Eliot rubbed over Quentin’s dick with his palm, and Quentin cried out. He lifted Quentin’s shirt off and started licking slowly over his nipples. Quentin, not being able to take it anymore, grabbed Eliot’s ass and pulled him down to rub against him.

“Fuck, Q. Ok, ok, I get it,” Eliot said laughing. He unbuttoned Quentin’s pants, removing them as well as his underwear. Quentin realized he was completely naked while Eliot was entirely clothed, but he stopped caring the second Eliot’s tongue licked over the head of his cock. 

Eliot licked around the tip in slow circles, finally taking it into his mouth. Quentin couldn’t even keep track of what Eliot was doing after that point. Between his lips, his tongue, and his hands, Eliot was quickly figuring out exactly what Quentin wanted based off his reactions to each touch. Quentin was making a lot of noise, and after one particularly loud moan, remembered just how close together everyone’s rooms were.

That thought was quickly overshadowed by the realization that his hands were free now, and he could finally tangle them in Eliot’s dark curls. Quentin gave an experimental tug, and Eliot stilled. He looked up at Quentin with a look of almost wonder, and then he said, “Do that again.”

Quentin happily obliged, running his hands through Eliot’s hair and pulling the way he’d imagined since seeing Eliot in the cottage living room that first day of the competition. Eliot picked up his pace, and Quentin started to feel heat pooling in his stomach.

“Eliot, wait, stop, I want. I want to touch you.” He pulled Eliot back up so he could kiss him, and reached his hand down to undo the buttons on Eliot’s pants. It was nearly impossible at this angle, so Eliot finally sat up and undid the last button himself, removing his pants. He also removed his vest and shirt while he was at it, saving his underwear for last.

Quentin had felt it before, but it was something else entirely to actually see Eliot’s dick. It was, well, huge. “Fuck,” Quentin said. He could’ve sworn Eliot smirked.

Quentin sat up onto his knees and took it in his hand, giving it a slow stroke. By the time he got to the tip, it was wet with precome. He used that for lubrication, and gave a few more strokes. Eliot put his hand over Quentin’s, guiding him on exactly how he wanted to be touched. Quentin cupped Eliot’s face in his other hand and kissed him.

Eliot was starting to get really worked up, and reached out to stroke Quentin’s dick. He wasn’t able to keep much of a rhythm in his current state, but Quentin was so close it wasn’t going to matter.

“Eliot, I… I…” and then Quentin cried out as he came, shooting all over Eliot’s stomach. He could feel Eliot guiding his hand to move faster over his dick. Eliot kissed him hard and moaned into his mouth as he came into Quentin’s hand.

Quentin collapsed onto his back, dragging Eliot to lay on top of him as they both caught their breath. It took a few moments for Quentin to notice the sticky mess between their stomachs. Eliot seemed to notice at the same time, and went to get some paper towels from the bathroom to clean them up.

“Do you want me to, um…” Quentin motioned toward his own bed awkwardly.

“Don’t you dare,” Eliot said, wrapping Quentin up in his arms and trapping him between his body and the mattress. Quentin felt so, well, _safe_ like this, completely surrounded by Eliot. He sighed happily, which earned him a soft kiss on the shoulder. And, well, that certainly gave Quentin all kinds of warm fuzzies.

He lightly stroked Eliot’s back until he could tell he’d fallen asleep. Quentin smiled and shifted his position carefully so he wouldn’t get crushed in the night by Eliot’s weight, and eventually drifted off as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fish trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHypmHHJld4


	7. Elevator

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slow update, September is kind of busy. Also I maybe got distracted by the amazing MHEA fics... anyway, hope you enjoy! This chapter has a very brief discussion of depression.

“Hey,” Eliot said softly. Huh, that was weird, Eliot sounded really close. Like, _really_ close. Quentin rubbed the sleep from his eyes and felt his elbow hit something. He turned to see Eliot lying next to him, idly playing with his hair. Right. Last night. 

“Hey,” Quentin said. He couldn’t come up with anything else to say as he continued to stare at Eliot dumbly.

“So uh, last night was…” Eliot trailed off. But he was smiling. That had to be a good sign, right?

“Yeah. Last night. Was.”

Eliot let out a breathy laugh and kissed Quentin’s forehead. Ok. So that was a thing. Eliot leaned back and looked at him with his unfairly gorgeous eyes, his hair sticking up adorably from where it had been pressed against the pillow. Quentin was suddenly very aware of his hard-on, which he’d get most mornings but did not seem like it was going away anytime soon. He was also newly aware that he and Eliot were both completely naked, which. Ok, so that was a thing, too.

“Um, so…” Quentin said, and then he quickly, somewhat clumsily, leaned in to kiss Eliot on the lips. He pulled away after a few seconds to see Eliot looking slightly dazed. There was a moment where they both just looked at each other that lasted for all of two seconds. Then, in one fast, fluid motion, Eliot flipped over so he was lying right on top of Quentin and kissed him deeply. His body pressed down right into Quentin’s and, yeah, Eliot was definitely also hard.

“Mmm, we have to… be downstairs for… rehearsal and interviews soon…” Eliot said in between kisses. They’d started grinding against each other, and Quentin was having a hard time thinking about anything besides the feeling of Eliot’s body moving against his.

“Don’t care,” Quentin said.

“Good, me neither.”

Eliot grabbed Quentin’s cock and started giving it slow, purposeful strokes. Quentin quickly realized that they really didn’t need to be concerned about getting downstairs in time, because this was not going to take long at all. It turned out that waking up naked next to the guy he’d been high-key crushing on and allowed to kiss and touch in excruciatingly limited ways for weeks was enough to make Quentin get very worked up very quickly.

“Eliot, I – if you keep doing that I’m going to – _fuck_ \- come like, super soon.” He rolled Eliot off of him and saw a shameless smirk on his face.

“Oh please,” Quentin said, “as if you’re in a much better situation.” He pointedly looked at Eliot’s dick where there was a bead of precome dripping out. He didn’t know where that confidence had come from, but when he reached out to circle the head of Eliot’s cock with his thumb, he could tell that he was right. Eliot inhaled sharply and reached out to grab onto Quentin’s shoulder, seemingly unaware of how hard he was digging in with his fingers. Quentin certainly didn’t mind. He didn’t spend too much time teasing Eliot, instead starting to stroke him with a rhythm guided by Eliot’s hip movements.

Eliot seemed like he was getting close, and Quentin started rubbing his own dick against Eliot’s thigh to relieve some of the pressure. That seemed to push Eliot over the edge. He pulled Quentin’s head down into a sloppy kiss as he came all over his stomach and into Q’s hand. Quentin kept thrusting against Eliot’s leg, and by the time Eliot reached his hand around his dick, Quentin was already tipping over the edge.

“God, you’re so perfect,” Eliot said as Quentin came. He collapsed with his head on top of Eliot’s chest and just lay there for a minute.

“Interviews…” Eliot said, and started shifting underneath Quentin.

They should probably talk about this, right? Like, seeing as this had happened last night and then again in the morning, probably Eliot was at least open to the idea of it happening again. But maybe not. Maybe Eliot had just gotten curious what it would be like to do this with Quentin, after all their time kissing in public spaces, and now that he knew he wouldn’t be interested in any repeat sessions. And if he did want it to happen again, what did that mean? Would they be actually dating, or just fucking?

“Mind if I use the bathroom first?” Eliot asked, tossing Quentin some paper towels to clean himself up.

“Uh, sure, yeah.” Well, Eliot didn’t seem concerned at the lack of discussion about this. That was fine. They’d talk about it eventually. It wasn’t like they could even avoid each other if they wanted to, anyway.

\- - -

The performance that night went fine. Quentin honestly wasn’t paying much attention to anyone’s acts. He was a little busy stealing glances at Eliot. Even during Eliot and Margo’s act, he didn’t bother trying to figure out how their trick was done, and instead just enjoyed watching Eliot perform. It didn’t help that the theme was _hats_ , and their act involved Eliot doing several quick changes into different hats, all of which looked incredibly hot on him.

Quentin at least didn’t have to worry for long about whether Eliot was interested in continuing whatever it was they’d started. As soon as they got back to the cottage, Eliot pulled him upstairs and finger fucked him until he felt like he was going to explode.

By the next morning, they still hadn’t had any sort of talk about their relationship (or lack thereof), but the previous night had made Quentin too happy to really care that much. At least, for the time being. 

“Instead of a mini-competition,” Jane announced, “this week we’re doing another field trip. We’re all going apple picking at Corian’s Orchard!”

“Yes!” Todd shouted from where he was filming in the back. Everyone turned to stare at him. “Sorry, I just… they have these really good apple cider donuts there that –“

“Yes they do, thank you Todd,” Jane interrupted what was likely going to turn into a long explanation of each of Todd’s favorite things about this particular apple orchard. “Anyway, try to stay in small groups, we want to get lots of footage. The bus is waiting for us outside. It’s about an hour’s drive away.”

As Quentin got onto the bus, he started overthinking. Would Eliot want to sit next to him? It felt so high school to care about that, but the ride was an entire hour. He kind of wanted to sit next to Eliot, maybe rest his head on his shoulder, fall asleep cuddling up next to him… Eliot was in front of him and settled down into a seat. Right next to Margo. Quentin tried not to feel too disappointed. Eliot always sat next to Margo on the bus, and he always sat next to Julia. There was no reason to think that would have changed. 

When they got to the orchard, he grouped off with the usual crew – Julia, Eliot, Margo, Josh, and Fen. Quentin was happy to have found a friend group. He hoped it would last after the competition, but he didn’t want to get his hopes up too high.

It turned out that being in a group with Eliot was a great apple-picking strategy. They’d passed by one of the other groups earlier, and Fray had been up on a ladder trying to reach the good apples. But Eliot could easily reach the high branches without even stretching.

“Dude, this is like, your super-power!” Josh said. “Ordinary civilian by day, apple picker extraordinaire by night.”

“It’s the middle of the day,” Margo said, giving him an incredulous look.

“Well, if I were to have an apple orchard superpower,” Josh continued, undeterred, “it would definitely be the ability to eat a seemingly impossible amount of apple cider donuts.”

“You might have to fight Todd on that one,” Julia said, nodding over to the donut stand where Todd was taking bites off a stick with half a dozen donuts on it, as if it were cotton candy.

“Sweet, I didn’t know they sold it by the stick!” Josh ran off to wait in line, followed immediately by Fen.

“Julia, they have the coolest gourds over there, come with me to check them out?” Margo said.

“Umm, sure I guess, but –“

“Excellent, vamanos!” And she pulled Julia away by the wrist, leaving just Eliot and Quentin. 

Eliot sighed. “I get the feeling we’re being conspired against. Margo, uh, really wants us to _talk_.”

Quentin snorted. “So she wants to force us to be alone together? We’re alone together literally every night.”

“Well, at a family-friendly apple orchard, there are…” his gaze flickered to Quentin’s lips, “fewer distractions.”

Quentin felt heat rising to his cheeks. “So um, do you want to? Talk, I mean.”

“I do. But I think... Someone’s getting eliminated tomorrow, and I wasn’t super happy with our performance last night and… maybe we could talk after? You know, when I’m less…” he made a vague gesture with his hands.

“No, I get it. Sure.” 

Eliot smiled. “Thanks. So uh, I actually kind of really want one of those donuts.”

“Oh my God, same, they look so good.”

\- - -

The first two pairs in the bottom three were Idri and Ess, and Marina and Pete. Quentin had tried to hide his excitement, but Julia hadn’t even bothered, looking right at Quentin and shooting him a huge grin when their names were announced.

“And the last pair in the bottom three this week is… Eliot and Margo.” Woah. This was their first time being in the bottom. Quentin couldn’t lose Eliot already. They’d only just started… whatever this thing was between them. They hadn’t even had time to define it yet. And if Eliot went home now, Quentin would probably never see him again. He’d just be that random contestant Eliot hooked up a couple of times while filming the show. A funny story that would be told at whatever elaborate cocktail parties Eliot surely hosted, and then swiftly forgotten.

Quentin caught Eliot’s eye as he and Margo walked toward Jane onstage. If Eliot was worried, he didn’t show it. If anything, he seemed to want to comfort Quentin, giving him a reassuring smile that did a surprisingly decent job at calming Quentin’s nerves. At least, until Jane spoke again.

“One of these three talented magic duos will be saying goodbye after tonight. Find out who’s safe and who’s still in danger, after the break!”

When they came back, the first pair announced safe was Marina and Pete. Of course. Karma was truly a myth. That left Eliot and Margo, and Idri and Ess.

“It’s down to these two pairs. And the duo we’ll be saying goodbye to this week is…” Jane slowly, _painfully_ slowly, started opening up the envelope she was holding. Julia put her hand on top of Quentin’s leg to stop him from shaking it.

“After the break!” Goddamn it, these shows and their commercial breaks. Quentin went over to talk to Eliot and Margo.

“Hey, um, how are you doing?”

“How do you _think_ we’re doing?” Margo snapped.

“Now now, Bambi.” Eliot turned to Quentin. “We’re fine. This is just how these things go. Someone has to go home, maybe it’ll be us, maybe it won’t. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”

“Idri and Ess have that whole adorable father-son vibe going for them,” Margo muttered. “Going for the fucking wholesome approach. It’s all an act, you know, I’ve been rooming with that twat and let me tell you, he is _not_ the sweet character he pretends to be. He tried to mansplain the Cylinder and Coins trick to me. That shit was part of my fucking thesis at Brakebills. The cock.”

The lights started flickering. “Oh, I have to get back. Um. Good luck,” Quentin said, giving Eliot’s shoulder a soft squeeze. Eliot gave him a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Welcome back,” Jane announced, sounding annoyingly chipper. “Sadly, one pair is going home tonight. Will it be father-son duo Idri and Ess, or best friends Margo and Eliot? And the pair going home is…” Quentin held his breath. “Idri and Ess.”

Thank God. Eliot and Margo hugged each other and took their seats. Quentin let out the breath he’d been holding. Man, this show was stressful. And Quentin hadn’t even been in the bottom three this time.

When they got back to the cottage, Eliot went over to make a drink. Quentin really wanted to get him up to their room, but he knew he should be patient. He didn’t want to be pushy, but Eliot had said they’d talk after the results show. And Quentin was aching to know what Eliot wanted out of what had been going on between them. But Eliot probably needed to wind down after the stress of almost being eliminated.

When Quentin looked back, he didn’t see Eliot. A few minutes later, he saw him coming back into the room from the nook area people used where there weren’t cameras. Pete followed closely behind. Huh.

Eliot came over to Quentin a short time later. “Upstairs?” He asked. Quentin nodded.

“What were you talking with Pete about?” Quentin asked when they got into the room.

“Oh, nothing much, he just wanted to talk to me about something. Guy’s a real dick.”

“Ok…” Should Quentin push for more information? It seemed like Eliot didn’t want to talk about it, and really it wasn’t his business. He decided to let it go. “So um, did you want to talk about… you know...” Quentin trailed off, vaguely motioning between himself and Eliot.

Eliot sat on his bed. “Yeah, let’s. Do that.” Quentin sat down next to him. “Quentin I… to be perfectly honest, I don’t have a lot of experience with… relationships. But um, I… I feel like maybe that’s what I want? With you?”

Holy shit. Ok. “Ok, yeah. I mean. Me too. That.” What were words.

Eliot laughed and looked away. “So um, does that mean… we’re dating?”

“Yeah,” Quentin said, unable to keep a huge smile from breaking across his face. Eliot looked up and he was smiling too. He leaned in to kiss Quentin sweetly.

“Wait so um…” Quentin said. “What should I call you? Like… can-I-say-you’re-my-boyfriend?” He said quickly. “Or is that too much. Because it’s fine if it’s too much I can just –“ Eliot interrupted him with another kiss.

“Yes Q, you can call me your boyfriend.” Quentin’s stomach flipped at hearing Eliot say the word. _Boyfriend_. Quentin was so glad he went on this show.

\- - -

“Dammit! I don’t know why I’m having so much trouble with this. Like, I know this will work in theory, it’s just. Every time, my hands like. Refuse to cooperate.” Quentin ran his hands through his hair, pulling harder than he meant to but not really caring. Card magic was his specialty. Literally, it’d been his concentration at Brakebills, and he’d been doing it nearly his whole life before that. He shouldn’t be having this much trouble with this. 

“Hey, take a deep breath. It’s going to be fine, we still have three days. You’ll get it, I know you will.” Julia gave him a soft smile. “Let’s take a break – I’m supposed to get lunch with Fen soon. Come with us.”

“Thanks, but… I’m not gonna be very pleasant company until I get this.” At Julia’s look, he quickly added, “I’ll just practice it a few more times. I promise I’ll eat something.”

“Ok… I’ll see you in an hour.”

After Julia left the rehearsal room, Quentin took a slow, deep breath. He had to stay calm, he didn’t have time for a panic attack right now. If he couldn’t do this move, they were going to need to change their whole act. And he really liked the idea they had.

The theme for this coming performance was _elevator_. Immediately upon hearing it, Quentin’s mind went to an advanced move called “the ambitious riser.” The effect started with the spectator’s selected card sticking out near the bottom of the deck. With just a small flick of the wrist, the card appeared to incrementally rise up through the deck, finally arriving on top.

It was notoriously difficult to perform, and only a handful of magicians in the world had mastered it. Mayakovsky himself, Brakebills’s most respected professor, had even cited it as the most difficult move he’d ever learned, having taken a decade of practice to perfect. Quentin had of course tried to learn the move, partially because he loved a challenge wherever cards were involved, and partially to stick it to Mayakovsky, who was a huge dick. He’d practiced it off and on for all three years at Brakebills, but had eventually given up. 

But more recently, he’d had an idea for creating the same effect with a different method. It used a gimmicked deck, which made it a much less versatile move. But still, it would look good for the trick he and Julia had planned. Or at least, it would if he could just get the stupid movements right.

He tried the move again. And again. He lost track of time doing it on repeat, but finally the card rose up without looking unnatural. “Yes!” he shouted, actually jumping in the air.

“Well, someone sounds excited.” Quentin quickly turned to see Eliot standing in the doorway. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. The door was open, and I was gonna ask if you wanted to get lunch?” Huh, Julia must not have closed it all the way when she left. Quentin hadn’t really been paying attention.

“Oh, um, yeah I could eat,” Quentin said. He still had a lot of work to do perfecting the move and getting to the point where he could perform it consistently, but he’d made good progress. He could relax enough to take a break.

Eliot walked into the room. “Doing a card trick for this week? Can I get a sneak preview?” 

“Yeah, so it’s… well, actually. I’ll show you!” Running off the high of having finally made the trick work, he went into full performance mode.

“Pick a card, any card!” Quentin said, using the most cliché line he could think of and dramatically holding out the deck for Eliot. He smiled and played along, picking out a card.

“The seven of spades, excellent choice! Now I’ll just put that into the middle of the deck. You’d expect it to stay there, but this is a special deck of cards. It actually acts like an elevator. When I push the button,” Quentin tapped the top of the deck, “it comes right back to the top.” He flipped the top card over, and indeed, it was Eliot’s card.

“Now, maybe that seemed suspicious, so I’ll show you again.” He stuck the card into the middle. “It’s not near the top, not near the bottom…” Quentin flipped over some cards to prove his point, “but as soon as I push that elevator button… ding! It comes right back to the top!”

“So this trick has sound effects?” Eliot said, grinning. 

“Hush, we’re not done yet. Now the problem here is that we can’t see the card coming to the top, so I’ll show you. I’ll leave it sticking out of the deck, just like this, and watch. Right now it’s on the second floor… “ Quentin flicked his wrist and the card rose up a bit. “Fourth floor…” Quentin repeated the motion so the card was even closer to the top. “Sixth floor, and… now it’s at the top!”

“Woah, what the fuck, you can do the ambitious riser?” Eliot looked absolutely shocked. Quentin beamed. It was one thing to fool another magician, but he felt an even bigger glow of pride at having impressed _Eliot_.

“No, that’s the thing!” Quentin said, barely able to keep still. “It _looks_ like the ambitious riser, but I changed it so it’s way easier. See, it uses this.” Quentin showed Eliot the gimmick, and then went through each step of the move.

“Seriously,” Eliot said, “that’s really clever. Damn, Coldwater. Who knew you were so good at inventing new moves.”

Eliot was staring right at Q’s hands, and took a few slow steps forward. If Quentin were smoother, maybe he’d find something witty and flirty to say back, like _I’ll show you what else my hands can do_. But seeing as that line was the best Quentin’s brain could come up with at the moment, he figured it was in his best interest to just keep his mouth shut.

It turned out to be a perfectly fine strategy. Eliot lifted Quentin’s right hand up, tangling their fingers together loosely, and placed soft kisses to each of Quentin’s fingers, one at a time. The gesture was so fucking tender, Quentin could barely stand it. Eliot finished by kissing Quentin’s pinky, and turned his head up to face Quentin. And Quentin, well. He couldn’t _not_ kiss Eliot. He brought his hand to the back of Eliot’s head and pulled him down into a deep kiss. But it wasn’t quite right. Eliot was kissing him back, but only softly. It reminded Quentin of their “fake” kisses from before in the cottage, where Eliot exerted a frustrating amount of control. Quentin fought back, letting his tongue dive into Eliot’s mouth. Eliot gave in for a few moments, but then started to lean back. Quentin was having none of it. He chased Eliot’s lips and succeeded in capturing them briefly, with Eliot pulling away again almost immediately.

“Q,” Eliot said, a hint of laughter in his voice. “I will be more than happy to do… anything you want, as much as you want, later tonight. But right now we should food.”

“I could just blow you here though,” Quentin breathed, moving his face close enough to almost brush Eliot’s lips, but holding back from actually kissing him again. If this was how Eliot wanted to play it, he could practice some restraint. Well, he could try, at least. “Julia won’t be back for another hour.”

Eliot licked his lips, and that was really testing that last speck of self-control Q had managed to dig up. He leaned in further to brush against Eliot’s lips, barely kissing him, letting their breath mingle. Honestly, right now this was turning Quentin on more than full-on kissing, largely because of the effect it seemed to be having on Eliot. His breath was getting increasingly uneven, and Quentin could feel every stuttering exhale.

Quentin ever so lightly trailed a finger down Eliot’s arm, and he could hear soft, beautiful noises come straight from Eliot’s throat. He just wanted to keep making Eliot whimper and moan and get louder and louder and more out of control. Eliot was always so put together, so composed, but Quentin had learned that he had the power to change that, and he had every intention of using it whenever the opportunity presented itself. Quentin licked his tongue gently over Eliot’s lips, and Eliot full-on backed up all the way to the door, running his hands through his hair.

“Q, we uh… we really should get lunch. It’s, um… important to eat.” His tone of voice didn’t seem to match the sentiment, but realization was slowly dawning on Quentin.

“Oh my God,” Quentin groaned in understanding. “Julia made you come here to get me, didn’t she?”

“She might have… mentioned something about making sure you remembered to take a break. And eat.”

“Fucking cockblock,” Quentin muttered. Eliot chuckled. “Ok, ok, fine, let’s get lunch.”

When they got outside, Eliot took Quentin’s hand carefully and gave him a questioning look, as if to ask _is this ok?_ Quentin couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips and squeezed Eliot’s hand in response. Quentin could get used to this.

\- - -

That night, after Eliot had taken Quentin apart to a very satisfying degree, Quentin laid curled up against Eliot, his head on his chest. Eliot was stroking Quentin’s hair, which he absolutely loved. Eliot was so gentle about it, it made him feel cared for.

“Julia really watches out for you,” Eliot commented.

“Yeah, um...” Quentin paused. Was this too much to spring on Eliot? They’d only just started officially dating. But Eliot had always seemed so supportive. Quentin thought back to that first day of being roommates, when Eliot had barely known him, but had seen him upset and said _I’m happy to talk, anytime._

“I uh, don’t have the best track record with things like, remembering to eat. And handling intense situations. And not like, just falling into mental spirals? I… have depression. And I have meds that help, but like. It’s still hard, a lot of the time.” 

Eliot kept stroking his hair, quietly listening. “And the show’s been a big adjustment, and kind of stressful, so… I think Julia’s just trying to stop me from like. Having a mental breakdown. Which is fair honestly. She’s seen me through some… not great times.”

“I’m sorry, that must be really hard. I’m glad you have a friend like her.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I don’t know where I’d be without Margo. Honestly I’m not sure I would have made it through Brakebills. I was… kind of a mess for a while. She really helped me through a lot of my bullshit.”

Quentin squeezed Eliot’s hand. He didn’t offer any more on the subject, and Quentin didn’t want to pry. But it was nice having Eliot be open like this with him. He gave Eliot a soft kiss before they fell asleep. 

\- - -

When the night of the sixth performance arrived, Quentin was feeling ready. He and Julia were up next, so they were backstage getting prepared.

“Welcome back from the break! As you know, our theme of the night is _elevator_. Let’s see if Marina and Pete can keep _elevating_ the competition with this next performance!”

Good grief. Quentin practiced his move a few more times as they showed interview footage of Marina and Pete. He’d gotten it down pretty perfectly, practicing almost constantly in front of a mirror to make sure it looked good from all angles. The clip ended, and Marina started introducing their trick.

“I need a volunteer to pick a card, completely at random, and sign it.” It took a moment to get someone from the audience to come up onstage.

“Great, the King of Clubs. Now I’m going to put your card in the middle of the deck. But this is a special deck, it acts like an elevator. When I press the button, your card comes to the top!”

What the fuck. This was incredibly similar to how Quentin and Julia’s trick started. Even the patter was almost the same. Quentin kept watching.

“But, you might be suspicious since you can’t actually see the card riding the elevator,” Pete said. “So let’s leave it sticking out of the deck.”

No way.

“Now watch. It starts on the second floor and moves it’s way up… fourth floor… seventh floor… all the way to the top! Your card, with your signature on it!”

Ok, what the actual fuck was happening. The audience applauded, and Alice commented on the trick first.

“Well, that was extremely impressive. For those who don’t know, what Marina and Pete just performed includes a technique that’s extremely advanced. I don’t know if you guys actually learned the technique, or if you found a way around it, but either way, well done. Very well done.”

The other judges agreed, complimenting the effect as well as the presentation. Again. What the actual fuck. Quentin slowly turned to face Julia, whose eyes were wide with horror. 

“How did they even…” Quentin started to say.

“Q,” Julia said slowly, working her bottom lip between her teeth. “You know I trust you, but I have to ask. Did you show the trick to anyone?”

“Fuck,” Quentin said, wiping his hand over his face. His stomach lurched as realization swept over him. “I showed Eliot.”

Julia nodded, almost as if that was the answer she was expecting. “Didn’t you say Eliot was being weird about talking with Pete?”

“Yeah. Fuck, I’m such an idiot!” So that was Eliot’s game all along? Get Quentin to trust him and then get him and Julia eliminated? What kind of deal did he have with Marina? He’d gone and let himself get swept up in a random guy, and now it was going to cost them both the competition. He couldn’t believe he’d done this to Julia.

Julia’s expression was unreadable. She seemed to be processing. Quentin needed to fix this, it was completely his fault.

“Ok, ok, we have what, 10 minutes until we go on?” Quentin said, pacing. “We could tell the judges what happened, try to get Marina and Pete eliminated for foul play.”

“No,” Julia said, “No, we don’t have any proof, and you know what happened last time when we tried that.” Julia’s voice was smaller than Quentin was used to hearing. God, he’d really fucked up.

“Ok, so what, we come up with a new routine in 10 minutes?” Quentin asked.

“I don’t _fucking_ know, Q!” Julia shouted. She tried to regain control of herself. “I’m sorry, I just, this is a lot…”

“I know, I know, I’m so sorry Jules.” He racked his brain for some kind of solution. “Ok, the theme is _elevator_ , yeah? What if we do our bank heist routine?”

“From when we were 12? Q, the judges will laugh us off the stage.”

“I don’t know, it fits the theme. It might not be advanced magic, but it’s fun. The audience might like it enough to save us.”

Julia nodded. “Ok, fine. It’s the best we can do. I’ll go see about music, and if they have any props.”

Julia managed to come back with two water guns and sunglasses for each of them, which would be perfect. Quentin took a few deep breaths, looked at Julia, and nodded. Here went nothing.

Their entrance onto the stage was like something out of a bad spy movie. They held the water guns close to their chests, sneaking around back to back while cheesy action sequence music played. They pretended to dodge laser beams while pointing their guns around until they got to the center of the stage.

“All clear?” Julia asked.

“All clear!” Quentin said.

“This bank robbery is going perfectly so far. It’s time to deploy our assistants!”

“Right!” Quentin said, taking out a deck of cards.

“Our accomplices are the four jacks,” Julia said while Quentin sorted through the cards face-up, locating the jacks. “The Jack of Diamonds is the mastermind behind the plan,” she continued. Quentin flipped that jack over onto the top of the deck. “The Jack of Hearts is the muscle of the operation. The Jack of Spades is our hacker, and the Jack of Clubs is the lookout.” With each card Julia explained, Quentin flipped it over on top of the deck, with the exception of the Jack of Clubs which stayed face-up on top.

“We’re on the rooftop right now,” Quentin said. “And we’re going to send these guys down through the elevator shaft to get into position, except for our lookout.”

Quentin took each of the face-down jacks one at time, pushing them into different locations in the middle of the deck. 

“Wait, Quentin, I think I see someone over there!” Julia aimed her water gun directly at the judges’ panel. “There are three people coming this way, and they look like they might not be too friendly!” The audience laughed at that. Wow, Julia was great at improvising.

“Oh no, Jack of Clubs, it’s time to warn the others!” Quentin took the Jack of Clubs off the deck. He then dealt the next three cards off the top of the deck, and sure enough, it was the three jacks, magically returned to the top of the deck.

“Phew, everyone made it back safely!” Julia said. “Now let’s get out of here!”

The music started up again, and Quentin and Julia made a dramatic exit. While the audience applauded, they came back on stage to hear their reviews.

“Ok, that was super cute,” Alice said. “But it was a really, really simple trick. I would have liked to see something more advanced at this stage of the competition.”

“Yeah, it was really fun. Honestly, probably the best _performance_ of the night. But definitely not the best trick of the night,” Kady said.

“We really are expecting more of you at this point in the competition. We’ll see how it goes for you,” Penny said. Well, that didn’t sound ominous at all.

Still, at least they’d managed to be entertaining. They might still have a shot at staying in the competition.

\- - -

Quentin didn’t talk to anyone after the show. As soon as they got back to the cottage, Quentin raced up to his room. Eliot came in seconds later.

“Quentin, what the fuck is going on? They stole your trick, right? You have to report them. How the hell did they even -”

“Like you don’t know.”

Eliot squinted his eyes in confusion. “What are you –“

“You were the only person I showed that trick to, Eliot! Julia and I never even practiced it outside that room!”

Eliot looked like he was trying to catch up. “Wait, you think I…”

“You asked me to show it to you! God, I’ve been so stupid.”

“Quentin, I swear I didn’t tell anybody what you showed me,” Eliot insisted as he took a few cautious steps forward. But Quentin wasn’t listening.

“What, so you thought you’d get me to fall for you, get me to trust you, and then I’d share all my secrets with you? Because, guess what, it worked. Congratu-fucking-lations.”

“Quentin, that’s not -“ but Quentin wasn’t going to let Eliot talk, not until he’d finished.

“What kind of deal do you have with Marina anyway? Did you get worried when you were in the bottom three? Thought without me in the picture, you could play up being the sad guy who just misses his boyfriend and get everyone to vote for you? Or… or… was your original plan to just to mess with my head, before Marina came along with a better idea. Plan on dumping me right before the finale so I’d be too distracted to do well? Because that’s just _cruel_ , Eliot,” he spat.

He was crying. He hated that he was crying. He hated that he’d let himself get so attached to, let himself really _trust_ this man he’d only really known for less than two months. 

“Q…” Eliot said, his eyes wide.

“You know what the worst part is? The thing I should be the most upset about is how you’ve probably gotten me eliminated from the competition. How you’ve probably gotten _Julia_ eliminated from the competition. But,” Quentin sniffed and took a couple shaky breaths. He had already humiliated himself completely, so there was no point in holding back now.

“You don’t get it,” Quentin continued. “I should have known this was too good to be true. People like you don’t just _like_ people like me. But for once in my life I wanted to actually believe, you know, that maybe something good could actually happen to me? That I could let myself be happy and the world wouldn’t come crashing down because of it.” 

“Quentin, you do deserve to be happy. Please. I’m not lying, I haven’t lied about anything! I… why are you being so quick to mistrust me? What have I ever done to make you think that I’d be capable of… this isn’t fair to me, Quentin.”

Quentin actually laughed at that. “Yeah, _I’m_ not being fair to _you_ here. You think I haven’t noticed you sneaking around talking to Pete? Is that where you were going all those nights when you didn’t come back until I was asleep? Off to plot with them?”

“Quentin, that’s not… I’m telling you I didn’t _do_ this!” Eliot shouted, his voice breaking. Quentin was taken aback. Eliot was a good actor. Quentin knew Eliot was a good actor. But this… this really didn’t seem like acting. Eliot looked like he was about to cry. Before Quentin could say anything, Eliot left the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ambitious riser trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI94ed0L97s  
> The bank heist trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Jxe9lilB8


	8. Escape

Eliot didn’t come back the entire night. Quentin knew for sure, since he kept waking up tossing and turning. Or maybe he just never fell asleep in the first place. Ess had gone home, so Eliot had probably gone off to sleep in Margo’s room. Someone might scold him about it later, since they were supposed to stick to their rooming assignments, but Quentin wondered if anyone would actually care enough to say anything about it.

Sometime around 3AM, he went downstairs to raid the fridge. They kept a steady supply of snacks available for everyone to eat, and if he wasn’t going to be able to sleep, he could at least use the distraction of a nice warm Toaster Strudel, one of the Seven Wonders of Toast-able Breakfast Foods. He took out the little icing packet included with the box and started decorating the top of the pastry by drawing a heart. Then he drew a crack in the heart. Then, somewhat violently, he spread the icing all over until it was just one big mess. He felt a little better. At least, for a couple of seconds. 

It was quiet enough in the living room that while he was eating on the couch, he could hear the soft sounds of someone breathing. He followed it all the way to the hidden nook, where he found Julia spread out on the small couch in what looked like a very uncomfortable position.

“Hey, Jules,” he gently shook her awake.

“Mmm?” she said, stretching out her arms.

“Come on, there’s space in my room.”

“Wha-‘bout Eliot?” She mumbled.

“With Margo. Come on, it’ll be way more comfy.” He helped pull her up and they went up to Quentin’s room.

“Jules… how long have you been doing this?”

“Just tonight. I usually… I usually don’t want her to know how much she gets under my skin. Like, why should I give up my own room just because of her, and give her that satisfaction? But tonight I just. I couldn’t be there.” Then she muttered under her breath, “Too fucking tempting to strangle her in her sleep.”

Quentin let out a single-breathed laugh in acknowledgement. “We’ll get this sorted out. We can go talk to the security footage people at the building. Maybe the judges. I don’t know, it’s late, we can make a better plan in the morning. But we have to do _something_.”

“Yeah. I just… I don’t know why she has it out for us this much. She already fucked over my life once, like, why does she feel the need to do it again? We… I mean, at least I thought… we used to be friends.” Julia’s voice broke on those last words.

“Hey,” Quentin said, giving her a hug. “It’s gonna be ok.” He didn’t know that. And she knew he didn’t know that. But what else could he say? Nothing was going to make this better. Nothing except maybe proving what had happened.

\---

Quentin and Julia were the last to get downstairs the next morning for Jane’s announcement..

“Ok everyone, this week we’re mixing it up a bit. We’re going to have a guys vs. girls competition!” Quentin glanced nervously at Julia, who had started taking a slow, deep breath. “We’ll be riding over to the rehearsal space, where we’ve set up two identical escape rooms. The first team to solve all the puzzles and escape will win tickets and backstage passes to The Shoshana Show this January.” The Shoshana Show was another television show about magic. It was somewhat of a comedy show/magic showcase. The host, Shoshana, was a famous comedy magician, and had been running the show now for at least 7 seasons. Getting to meet her backstage would be pretty exciting.

They took the bus over to the theater, and when they arrived were quickly separated into their groups. Quentin, Eliot, Humbledrum, Pete, and Josh were escorted to wait in the hallway outside of a door. Quentin tried to catch Eliot’s eye, but he was refusing to make eye contact. They hadn’t spoken since last night, and Quentin was getting more and more concerned. How were they supposed to act in front of the cameras? Surely Eliot wouldn’t start fighting with him during this activity, right? And if he did, how should Quentin react? 

“Alright, guys, who else is pumped?” Josh broke the silence, rubbing his hands together. “I think we need a team name. Any ideas?”

No one said anything. “The Grizzlies?” Humbledrum suggested after a moment.

“The Grizzlies,” Josh said, pretending to consider it while nodding his head, but clearly unsatisfied. “That is… a great backup plan. Any other ideas?”

“Let’s just be Team B and get this over with,” Eliot muttered.

“Fine by me,” Quentin said, crossing his arms. Josh looked to Pete for help, but he just shrugged. Josh looked like he was about to say something else, but Todd interrupted, trotting over with his camera in tow.

“Hey guys, I’ll be giving you your instructions!” Todd pulled out a piece of paper and started reading off it in what he probably thought was a dramatic voice. “Deep in the vaults of the library, you discovered a secret document written by Harry Houdini himself. In it, he described a secret trick he’d invented, never before seen by human eyes. Before he died, he set up a room of puzzles that only a truly worthy team of magicians could solve. If you manage to complete the puzzles and escape, you will be rewarded with the secret to his trick! But Houdini, ever the risk taker, believed that nothing worthwhile ever comes without danger. If you fail to escape in 45 minutes, the room will flood with water and you will be trapped inside. Your time begins… Now!”

“Alright, let’s do this!” Josh said excitedly, opening the door and hurrying inside.

The room actually had pretty high production quality. There was a door at the back, sealed off with a chain that had several locks attached. It looked like they’d need to find 7 keys in order to unlock each. The rest of the room was filled with objects involved in some of Houdini’s most famous escapes. There was a Chinese Water Torture Cell in one corner, and a wooden barrel in another. Near the center of the room was a packing crate with nails sticking out, and not far from that was a large, metal jug that Quentin recognized as a milk can. The walls were lined with portraits, and there was a bookcase on one wall with various objects on its shelves.

There was another door in the room that wasn’t chained off, which Humbledrum opened soon after they all walked in. It turned out to be a closet with a few straightjackets on hangers. This whole setup was actually pretty cool.

Pete went over to start looking at the bookcase, with Humbledrum following right behind. Quentin went to the closet and started taking out the straightjackets.

“Woah, what do you think you’re doing?” Eliot said.

“Uhh, taking these out to get a better look at them.”

Eliot snatched the straightjacket Quentin was holding out of his hand. “The order might matter, we can’t just start moving everything around.” It wouldn’t have been a big deal if it weren’t for Eliot’s tone when saying it.

“Jeez, no need to be so snippy,” Quentin muttered under his breath, trying to be quiet enough that the mics wouldn’t pick it up.

“You’re right, darling, my sincerest apologies for not wanting to mess up the puzzles beyond repair.”

Yikes. So that’s how this was going to go. Quentin just sighed and went over to look at the barrel. It was actually pretty interesting, there were several rings around the barrel you could rotate, and it seemed like you had to get them lined up correctly to open the top.

“Humbledrum, I swear to God,” he heard Pete say. “I _just checked_ those books. There’s nothing in them. We’re wasting time, just, go work on the milk can or something,” he said dismissively. “Maybe it has honey in it,” he added mockingly.

“That’s a good idea, Pete!” Humbledrum said, seemingly unbothered. He started making his way over to the milk can. “But you might want to take a look at this first.” He handed Pete one of the books, opened to a certain page. Pete’s eyes widened in surprise at something he’d apparently missed. Despite the stupid and innocent act Humbledrum kept up all the time, Quentin suspected he was actually smarter than he let on.

“Guys, guys I found something!” Josh announced from over by the crate. He’d apparently discovered a magnet somewhere and was running it over the nails. Only some of them were attracted to the magnet and got pulled out when it passed over them.

“Oh, I bet the nails that stay in will spell something!” Quentin said, getting excited.

“Yeah, no shit,” Eliot muttered. Quentin shot him a harsh glare. Eliot said, louder this time and clearly forced, “I bet you’re right, babe.”

A few more minutes in, and they’d made a small amount of progress. They’d gotten one key from the crate puzzle, and were partway through a couple of the other puzzles.

“Oh, Eliot, where did you find those symbols again? I think I need them to line up the barrel rings,” Quentin said.

“What symbols?”

“The… the symbols. You told Josh you’d found some symbols somewhere? That it might be like, some kind of code?”

“Why don’t you just ask him then?” Eliot hadn’t even turned around to acknowledge him.

“Fine. Whatever. Josh, do you remember the symbols?” Maybe if he just didn’t engage with Eliot at all, they could get out of this room without tearing each other’s heads off.

Josh showed Quentin the portrait with the symbols, and they used them to open the barrel, finding a fishing pole inside. It was actually a good thing Josh had been the one to help, because the end of the fishing line started moving towards the magnet he was holding.

“Oooh, ooooh!” Josh exclaimed. “I bet this is how we get the stuff out of the water chamber! It’s magnetic!” The chamber was too tall to easily reach, but there was a small box at the bottom they hadn’t known how to get out. Quentin cast the line into the water and started trying to aim it toward the box, but he was having a hard time getting it to go where he wanted.

“Pathetic,” Pete said. “Let me see it.”

“No, I’m fine,” Quentin said. “Just go look at the other puzzles.”

“Quentin,” Eliot said, “you’re obviously not good at this, just let someone else do it. We don’t have time.”

“Right. Of course you agree with Pete.” He was so close to the box, if he could just get it to move a little bit more to the left…

“Just gimme,” Eliot said, grabbing for the pole. Quentin lifted it over his head to keep control.

“You’re both being idiots. I’ve actually _been_ fishing. Just give it here,” Pete said, grabbing for it as well. The three of them fought in a tangle of limbs, until the pole slipped from all of their hands right up into the tank. There was silence for a moment as they watched it slowly sink to the bottom.

“Well,” Josh said, carefully looking over the three of them. “Maybe it’s time to uh, take a break? Look at some other puzzles? _Separately,_ maybe?” 

“I can get it out,” Humbledrum volunteered, a bit too cheerfully. He started climbing up the side of the tank. 

This was the last straw. “You guys keep looking, Eliot and I are going to check inside the closet.”

“Ok, that’s stupid, I am _not_ going in there.”

“Yes, you are,” Quentin said through clenched teeth. “Maybe something happens when it’s dark and the door is closed.”

“That’s not actually a bad idea,” Josh said. Quentin didn’t wait for Eliot to protest anymore, he tugged him into the closet and shut the door.

“Ok, what the fuck, Eliot.”

“Yeah, I could say the same to you,” Eliot said, brushing off his sleeves as if just standing inside the closet was accumulating dust on his outfit.

“Look, I get that we’re not each other’s favorite person right now,” Eliot let out a harsh breath at that, and Quentin could practically feel him rolling his eyes. “But I need to know what we’re doing for the show. Are we acting like we’re together and everything’s fine? Are we acting like we’re fighting? Because I would love for you to at least just pick one and stick to it. It’ll be better for both of us to be on the same page.”

Eliot didn’t say anything. Quentin sighed. “You know, I don’t know why I’m bothering. For all I know you’d rather we not coordinate.”

“Right,” Eliot said. “So I can betray you again and spin some story about you in the interviews. Because that’s what you think of me.”

Quentin sighed. “Eliot, can we… can we just talk? I’m sorry that I - just, there’s obviously _something_ going on. If I’m so wrong about what it is, then just tell me.”

“I promise I won’t fight anymore, darling.” The distant, icy way he said it caught Quentin completely off guard. He stayed in the closet for another minute even after Eliot left, calming himself down.

When he came out, Josh smiled at him. “You were in there a while, did you find something?”

“Uh, no. Just, I thought there was something, but um. No.”

Josh gave him a brief questioning look, but then went back to whatever he’d been doing with the bookcase. Quentin looked over to see a soaking wet Humbledrum hard at work on the milk can puzzle, but he didn’t seem particularly unhappy about his current state. It looked like the box they’d pulled from the water tank had contained a key, since a second lock was laying open on the floor by the door. They were already 20 minutes into their 45 minute time limit, and so far they’d only found 2 of the 7 keys. Quentin wondered if things were going any better in Julia’s group. 

When the timer ran out, they’d found 5 keys in total. It honestly could have been a lot worse, considering.

“Ha ha ha ha,” Todd’s attempt at a dramatic voice came through a speaker. “You have failed to solve all of Houdini’s puzzles. The room slowly begins to flood with water, and you are never heard from again! Houdini’s secret will remain a mystery for years to come!” His tone of voice changed back to normal. “You can exit the room now, to uh… the afterlife, I guess.”

They shuffled out, and were greeted with the women’s group approaching them, led by Jane. One look at Julia’s face told Quentin they hadn’t had a great time, either. Even Fen looked exhausted. 

“Unfortunately, neither group was able to complete the escape room in time,” Jane said. “It’s possible we made it too challenging. Never fear! We will simply judge the winning team based on number of keys found. The men found 5, and the women found 6, so today’s victory goes to the women!” 

“You’re welcome, bitches,” Margo said to her team. She turned and walked off toward the buses, with Eliot following right behind. 

“So uh, how was it?” Quentin asked Julia.

She just shook her head. “Since we’re here, we might as well stick around and see if we can get security camera access,” she said instead.

“Baby, what happened to you?” he heard Fray say to the still somewhat wet Humbledrum.

“Oh, I had the best adventure!” he replied. At least someone seemed to have had fun.

Quentin and Julia made their way through the hallways, and after asking directions from a few people they passed, found their way to the surveillance room. There was no guarantee anyone would be inside, since there wasn’t a show happening right now, but it was a big theater that had a lot of events, so it was possible. They knocked on the door and waited about 20 seconds. They were just about to give up and try something else when the door opened to reveal a slightly annoyed-looking man with an unfortunate haircut.

“Can I help you?” He asked.

“Hi, yes,” Julia said. “We’re contestants on the Centurion Challenge. Something happened last week, and we were wondering if we could take a look at some security footage to piece together some details.”

“Good lord, what on earth is going on with that show,” he muttered. “I’m afraid I can’t just let anyone come look at our footage. But if I hear it’s ok from someone in charge on the show, I can let you in.”

Before they could say anything else, he closed the door.

“We have Jane’s number,” Julia offered.

“Yeah, ok, let’s do that.” After calling Jane and telling her what was going on, they were, unfortunately but not totally unexpectedly, referred to Penny. He and Julia played rock paper scissors to see who would have to call him. They tied, so Julia put it on speaker phone. 

“This is Penny Adiyodi.”

“Hi, Penny, this is Julia and Quentin from the Centurion Challenge. We brought up a problem with Jane and she told us to call you.” Thank God for Julia, Quentin was terrible at starting conversations on the phone.

“Ok…” Penny said, already sounding annoyed. Julia nodded towards Quentin. Guess it was his turn to contribute.

“The trick that Marina and Pete performed yesterday was the one we came up with and had planned to perform. We invented that method for the ambitious riser, they stole it from us.”

“God, not this again. Look, you guys realize this is a serious accusation, right?”

“We do,” Julia said. “And we hope that since it’s such a serious issue, it’ll be investigated seriously.”

“Do you have any proof that it was your trick?”

“I mean, not yet, but we practiced it in our rehearsal room. If there’s security footage showing that - ”

“There aren’t any cameras in those rooms,” Penny said, sounding tired.

“Oh,” Julia said. “Are… are you sure about that?”

“Pretty damn. Look, I don’t want you to think that I don’t care. If what you’re saying is true, it’s really shitty. But without any evidence, there’s not much I can do. You invent a trick, you have to document that shit. But look. If you think there’s other security footage that would be useful, I can have them let you in to look through it. But unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, we don’t have enough staff to sort through hours of footage.”

Julia started to say, “No, that’s –“

“Yes, that would be great,” Quentin interrupted.

“Ok, I’ll call them.”

Julia looked at Quentin questioningly as she hung up. “I’m just… I’m not sure that Eliot did this, Jules. What if Marina or Pete got into our rehearsal room or something? Just… I don’t want to give up.”

“Q, I know you like him, but come on.”

“I… I know what it looks like. But… he said he didn’t do it and… you didn’t see him when I confronted him about it. What else did we have planned for today anyway?”

“Fine, you’re right. Let’s play detective and catch some criminals.” She gave him a small smile.

A moment later the same man opened the door. “Ok, you can come in. I’m Charlton,” he said, walking with his back to them, “head of the surveillance division of security. It was supposed to be my day off, but. Well. Anyway, what are you looking for, exactly?” He turned back around and leaned against a table.

“We’d like to see footage of the hallway outside Rehearsal Room 136.” Quentin said. “For, well, I guess all of this past week would be good, to start.”

“An entire week’s worth of footage?” He said. “You do realize how long that will take to look through, right?”

“We know what we’re looking for,” Julia said sweetly. Not entirely true, but close enough. “We’ll fast forward.”

“Very well, I can get that for you. Give me a few minutes. Wait over there.”

They waited patiently as Charlton sorted through files on one of the computers, finally opening up a folder containing a bunch of subfolders.

“It’s organized by day, and then each file is a different hour. This is the only camera with a view of that door.”

“Ok, great!” Julia said. “We’ll just, look through it then.” Charlton watched over Julia’s shoulder as she opened a file, 12PM-1PM last Friday. “Umm, I think we can handle it if you need to go back to work…” Julia said.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable, but I can’t allow you to access the computer without me watching over. It’s protocol.”

“Right, well, it might take a while… could you just send us the files instead?” Quentin asked.

“Oh, God no. This footage doesn’t leave this room, not without a police warrant at least.” 

Even on 16x speed, this was taking forever. “So what exactly are we looking for?” Charlton asked after a few minutes. Even though they were taking up Charlton’s time, he didn’t seem to be nearly as impatient as either of them. He must be used to painstakingly searching through footage.

“Someone besides us entering this room. Probably. We’ll know it when we see it,” Julia said. After about 20 minutes, they’d gone through 5 hours worth of the Friday footage. Julia opened the Saturday folder, but it only had about half as many files as Friday’s.

“Well that’s odd,” Charlton said, leaning in and taking over control of the mouse. He opened Sunday’s folder, which was completely empty. Monday’s was empty as well. Tuesday’s looked like almost the right number of files.

“What does that mean?” Julia asked.

Charlton sighed. “This happens sometimes. These cameras have been extra finicky lately, sometimes they’ll stop recording for a few days – could be a power issue, maybe a network issue. I asked someone to look into this weeks ago, must I do everything myself?”

“So does that mean, there’s no footage of those days?” Quentin asked, his heart sinking.

“Afraid not. You can still look through other days if you’d like.”

They stayed another few hours, but nothing was turning up. Charlton did eventually stop breathing down their necks, at least.

“I don’t think this is going anywhere,” Julia said. Quentin had to agree, they barely knew what they were looking for, not to mention when. For all they knew, Marina and Pete had planted something in their room weeks ago. Quentin was about to stand up, but Julia looked like she had an idea.

“Wait, Q, the deck switch. Charlton, can we see backstage footage the night of…” she pulled out her phone calendar, “September 30?”

“There was a power issue that night, none of the stage cameras recorded anything,” he said. “What happened that night anyway?”

“Why do you ask?” Julia said.

Charlton leaned back and crossed his arms. “I mean, you’re looking for footage from that night, so I assume something important must have happened. That’s all.”

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter anyway if there’s no footage.” Quentin turned to Julia. “It’s awfully convenient, don’t you think?”

Julia gave a bitter laugh. “They’re just always one step ahead of us.” She said it almost like she found it funny, but Quentin knew Julia well enough to recognize this tone. She was on the verge of exploding. “You know, if they put half as much effort into creating magic tricks as they did to covering their tracks, they wouldn’t even need to steal anything. God, I hate those two!” she shouted, banging her fists on the table.

“I know, I know,” Quentin said, and he gave her a hug, but she pulled away after a short moment.

“Let’s just go. Thanks, Charlton.” Charlton looked pretty shaken by that outburst. Quentin felt a bit bad for him, but probably the best thing they could do for him was to just get out of his way.

\---

Getting put in the bottom three wasn’t a surprise. There were only 5 pairs left, so the majority of contestants ended up there. The most frustrating thing was that Marina and Pete were safe, along with Eliot and Margo.

After announcing the bottom three, they played footage from the escape room event, and they certainly played up the drama. Fortunately, there was plenty of it to go around, so the focus wasn’t even primarily on Quentin and Eliot.

On the men’s team, they showed Pete snapping at Humbledrum, Eliot snapping at Quentin, and Josh trying to bring everyone together. They of course showed the dramatic fight over the fishing pole, actually playing the clip in slow motion when it flew into the water. Even through his anger, Quentin couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculous look on everyone’s faces as they watched their prized possession slowly and inevitably slip away. They even played Chariots of Fire as Humbledrum heroically dove into the water tank. He not only fetched the pole, but actually dove down and grabbed the box with his _bear_ hands and – nope. No, Quentin was not going to allow himself to stoop to the level of making bear puns in his head.

On the women’s team, Marina and Julia had plenty of moments arguing over how to solve the puzzles. At one point they both grabbed onto the barrel and each tried to rotate it in opposite directions, until Margo yelled at them both to cut the crap. There was also an argument between Fray and Fen, with Fray shouting at Fen to leave her alone and just let her solve the puzzle on her own, and Fen insisting that she was just trying to help.

It definitely seemed like Margo was the uniting force behind the operation. “Listen up, ***sacks, we are not about to let America see the women’s team as a bunch of catty *******. Now ovary up. Let’s solve these puzzles and show ‘em who’s boss.” It was an interesting choice of censoring, but the speech certainly made Margo look badass. That was definitely going to get Margo and Eliot popularity points with the audience.

“I guess that just goes to show what happens when you put a bunch of magicians together in an escape room,” Jane said once the clip was over. “Congratulations to the women’s team for finding the most keys! Now the moment you’ve been waiting for, the first duo who is safe tonight is… Josh and Fen! You two can go back to your seats.” 

Oh boy. That meant that Quentin and Julia now had a 50/50 chance of going home. They were both too nervous over the break to say much of anything to each other. Well, at least they’d made it this far. It wasn’t unheard of for people on the show to become successful even if they didn’t win. Although, Quentin couldn’t remember the names of any contestants who hadn’t at least made it to the finale. 

Quentin really wished he could talk to Eliot right now. More than anything, he just wanted a hug, and Eliot gave the best hugs. Even worse, if he went home now, he knew there was no chance he’d get closure on whatever had happened here. He wanted to make up with Eliot, to apologize, even, but he still wasn’t sure what to believe about what had happened. He wanted to believe Eliot, wanted to trust him, but he knew he was still lying about something. And without knowing what… Quentin knew he shouldn’t have let himself get his hopes up about actually making friends on this show. Being with Eliot had really been too good to be true. He had to learn to manage his expectations better. He just hoped he didn’t embarrass himself by crying on national tv if they sent him and Julia home.

When it was finally time to announce who was eliminated, Quentin grabbed Julia’s hand. He needed something to anchor him.

“We’ve loved having all four of you on the show, but unfortunately, we have to say goodbye to two of you tonight. The pair that is going home is… Fray and Humbledrum.”

Quentin should have felt relief at that. But honestly, he just started feeling more anxious. Maybe somewhere deep down, he’d been secretly hoping to go home. After all, it would be easier to just put this behind him without having to deal with all the drama. But it was just two more weeks until the show would be over. He needed to find the motivation to keep going.

\---

Eliot kept sleeping in Margo’s room that entire week, and Julia slept in Quentin’s. Eliot didn’t exactly ignore Quentin, but he did the bare minimum to pass as someone who didn’t totally hate him. He would say good morning to him at breakfast, sat next to him on occasion while he read (always remaining silent), and politely made him a drink one night. Eliot himself seemed to be drinking more than usual, going through several cocktails even on rehearsal nights. At one point, Quentin saw him take an entire bottle of vodka with him upstairs. Quentin didn't know if he should be concerned. But as much as he wanted to talk to Eliot, it was obvious that Eliot was not going to be receptive.

It was really becoming draining just to get out of bed. Fortunately with Julia staying in his room, and with the rigid schedules the show forced on them, he couldn’t fall into his habit of staying in bed all day and hiding from the world. But he noticed Julia didn’t seem to be doing so well either. Both of their levels of enthusiasm for planning a new trick just weren’t as high as they usually were. 

Tuesday, the day before the next performance, Quentin and Julia arrived downstairs to do the usual pre-show interview. It started out normal enough - questions about how rehearsals were going, what they thought was unique about their upcoming trick, etc.

“And how is everything with you and Eliot?” Jane asked.

“What?” Quentin asked, startled. “Why do you ask?”

“It just seems like you two haven’t been spending as much time together. Did you have some kind of fight?”

Fuck. Of course the producers would know about it, Eliot had been sleeping in a different room every night. He thought when no one insisted Eliot stay in his assigned room, they’d been in the clear.

“Umm. I mean… the competition is just stressful.” Jane nodded sympathetically.

“Can you tell us what happened?”

“I – “

“Can we just not?” Julia said, sounding completely pissed. “This show loves to ignore anything inconvenient for them, but then draw attention to everything _private_ or humiliating for us. Come on Q, we’re done.” Julia walked out of the room, and Quentin followed.

\---

Quentin and Julia’s performance the next night was… lacking. They didn’t mess up their trick, but neither of them brought any real energy to it. The judges had lackluster comments, and Quentin found that he didn’t really care. He was feeling pretty done with this whole thing anyway.

To top it all off, in the middle of the show came a wonderful segment Jane introduced with: “Could there be trouble in paradise? Let’s check in with our favorite lovebirds, Quentin and Eliot.” 

_“How are things with you and Quentin? We’ve noticed you aren’t sleeping in the same room anymore.”_ They showed some footage of Eliot going into Margo’s room, and Quentin and Julia going into Quentin’s, all with time/day stamps to emphasize the fact that it had happened multiple times.

_“Yeah. Whatever, so we aren’t getting along right now. It happens.”_ Eliot said.

It cut to Quentin. _“Did you have some kind of fight?”_

_“I mean… the competition is just stressful.”_

It cut away to Margo holding Eliot’s hand. _“Can you just leave him alone? He clearly doesn’t want to talk about it -”_ they cut the clip mid-sentence. Knowing Margo, Quentin figured she’d had some choice words for them that weren’t exactly suitable for the network.

It went back to him and Julia. _“Can we just not?” – “Come on Quentin, we’re done.”_ Of course they’d cut out Julia insulting the show. The segment ended there.

“Well,” Jane said, “I think I speak for all of us when I say that whatever’s going on, we hope the two of you can work it out.” 

Quentin just crossed his arms and blew a strand of hair out of his face. It fell right back down into his eye.

\---

Quentin woke up already dreading this week’s activity, after last week’s had been a complete disaster. Fortunately, this time it turned out they were all just working with their partners. They were each assigned another pair to create a painting of. Quentin and Julia were assigned Fen and Josh, thank goodness. He really didn’t want to have to look at Marina and Pete’s faces for an hour, or even Eliot’s, for that matter. The man was unfairly gorgeous, and having to focus on nothing but that for an hour would have just made him even more upset.

Eliot and Margo had been assigned Quentin and Julia. The paintings of them turned out fine, actually. Margo had painted Quentin, and Eliot had painted Julia, which shouldn’t have been surprising. But it still made him sad that, had things been different, he could have gotten to see how Eliot would have painted him.

\---

The one pair not in the bottom three that week was Fen and Josh. Well, good for them. Anyone who had managed to keep as positive an attitude as them on this godforsaken show deserved good things to happen to them.

“By the judge’s votes, these three duos are in danger tonight. But this week, we have something unprecedented in the history of the Centurion Challenge. The pair with the lowest votes is _not_ the pair going home this week. Find out who it is and why, after the break.”

Well, _shit_. Did that mean even Fen and Josh had a chance of going home? What had happened?

“What do you think is going on?” Julia whispered.

“I have no idea.” He _hoped_ what was going on was that the judges had actually looked into Marina and Pete’s cheating and found something. Or, for all Quentin knew, this was about an entirely different instance of cheating given this show’s shitty job at policing contestants. But it was also possible Marina and Pete had done some other type of sabotage, like framing someone for something. Or what if it wasn’t about Marina and Pete at all, and a pair of contestants had needed to drop out for some reason? The possibilities were endless. Before Quentin could think of any more, the break was over.

“Welcome back. We last left off with these three teams in danger, going by the judges’ votes. But last night, an issue was brought to the attention of our producers that has changed everything.” Jane ended the sentence sounding appropriately dramatic. “The following footage you’re about to see was taken before last week’s performances.”

They rolled a clip that showed security footage from the hallway. It was the same camera Quentin and Julia had painstakingly watched hours of footage on. Quentin looked at the timestamp and saw it marked as two Sundays ago, right around 1PM. But, that couldn’t be right, there was no footage of that Sunday. The camera hadn’t recorded anything.

Quentin kept watching. It showed Julia exiting the room, and then the clip fast forwarded through the next few minutes. It went back to normal playback speed, and Marina came into view in the hallway. She leaned down over the door handle to Quentin and Julia’s rehearsal room, and it looked like she was picking the lock. She slowly opened the door, then jumped backwards a bit. Right, Quentin was actually in the room then. Had he really not heard all of that happen? Marina quickly reached her arm through the door, then ran out of view. A few seconds later, Eliot came walking down the other end of the hallway. They cut the clip there.

Quentin was still trying to piece everything together when Jane spoke.

“We take cheating very seriously here on the Centurion Challenge.” Ha. Quentin managed to keep himself from rolling his eyes at that. “We have thoroughly investigated this incident, and have concluded that Marina and Pete recorded Quentin and Julia’s routine last week in their private rehearsal room, and passed it off as their own. Given this evidence, Marina and Pete, you are eliminated from the competition. Everyone else will continue on to next week.”

Well, damn. Quentin honestly couldn’t believe it. Did Penny actually care more than he’d let on, and had kept investigating? Or perhaps their true ally was Charlton, maybe he’d found the missing footage after all.

As head judge, Penny chimed in. “Given the circumstances, we’ve decided that it doesn’t make sense to reveal who would have gone home had this not happened. Marina and Pete, that was an incredibly idiotic stunt you pulled, and you deserve to be called out on it. We’ve never had anything like this happen before on this show, and I really hope we never do again. Get ready to bleep this out –“ He paused. “That was really fucked up.”

Quentin was barely paying attention. His joy at Marina and Pete finally being exposed had quickly changed into a huge sinking feeling. God, he’d really fucked up. There was no way Marina would bother with planting a camera if Eliot was feeding her information. He was such an idiot. He’d blamed Eliot without even asking for his side of the story first. What kind of person did that make him?

“Well,” Jane said. “Thank you for tuning into this historic episode. Next week is our season finale, where one of our final three pairs will be rewarded with headlining a two-month show in Las Vegas. Don’t miss Margo and Eliot, Quentin and Julia, and Fen and Josh on next week’s Centurion Challenge!”

After the house lights came on, Pete stalked right over to Eliot. “You’d better watch yourself, Waugh, you’ll find out soon enough that we don’t mess around.”

“Yeah, cuz I’m sure people will view you as a reliable source after all this,” Eliot drawled. 

“I think you’ll see that anonymous sources can be perfectly believable with sufficient evidence.” Pete went back to Marina, who was in the middle of a heated exchange with Julia.

Quentin reached out to grab Eliot’s shoulder. “Eliot, what –“

“It’s _nothing_ , Quentin,” Eliot snapped, jerking away and walking toward the bus.

What the fuck was going on?


	9. Finale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the season finale! This has been so fun to write. Thank you everyone for your comments - they have meant so much to me <3 Now, without further ado, onto the last chapter!

On the bus ride back to the cottage, Josh and Fen sat across from them, with Eliot and Margo at the very front of the bus, several rows away. Josh seemed eager to find out more about what had happened with the whole cheating scandal.

“So Marina and Pete stole your trick, and you guys still managed to find something to perform and not get eliminated? That’s like, mega impressive.”

“Thanks,” Quentin said. He knew he should be in a better mood, excited to finally talk about how horrible Marina and Pete had been to them this whole competition. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Eliot.

“We should all have a party when we get back to celebrate. Now that it’s just the six of us!” Fen said, excited as always for group bonding activities. Seeing the look on Quentin’s face, she added, “That stuff they showed with you and Eliot was just a thing you guys were doing for the cameras, right? Are you guys… are you actually fighting?” 

Quentin took a deep breath. “It’s… complicated. I really fucked up.”

“Well then you should just apologize!” Fen said.

“That doesn’t always fix everything,” Quentin snapped. Fen leaned back in her seat. “Sorry, I’m just… I’m not in the mood for a party. You guys go ahead without me.” 

“Julia? You up for a yay-we’re-in-the-finale party?” Josh asked. 

“I think I’ll pass for tonight, thanks though.”

“Jules, you should go. I’ll be fine.”

“No, I know, it’s not that. I just… it’s a lot to process, is all. Maybe another night.”

When they got back to the room, Quentin breathed a sigh of relief. He finally didn’t have to act in front of everyone. It was just Julia, so if he wanted to mope, he felt perfectly comfortable doing so.

“You ok?” Julia asked, brushing Quentin’s hair away from his eye. “Do you want to talk about it? 

“I mean, I don’t really know what there is to talk about. I falsely accused my boyfriend of stealing from me with no evidence, and now there’s no chance he’ll ever talk to me again. That’s really it.” Julia nodded slightly, not exactly in agreement with what he’d said, but more in understanding.

“Come here.” She gave him a long hug, and it did make him feel a little better.

Before they pulled away, he asked, “Are _you_ ok? It looked like you and Marina were really going at each other.”

Julia stepped away to sit on the bed, with Quentin joining in the spot next to her. “She said… she said I abandoned her. That I act like I’m so much better than her, that when she threatened me when we were in New York she was just… just trying to get me to not leave. She said ‘you’re no better than those snobs at Brakebills we used to make fun of.’” She gave him an apologetic look. “No offense.”

“No, I mean it’s fair. We have kind of made a reputation for ourselves of looking down on people who didn’t go there.”

“I mean, what she did was fucked up, stealing my tricks back then. And obviously stealing our stuff now. But… but I can’t help but feel like on at least some level, she was right. She was my friend. And I just… I just left her.”

“Jules, I can see why you might feel that way, but… what she was doing was illegal. You didn’t want to be caught up in that, so you left. That is super fair, and she had no right to get revenge on you for it like she did.”

Julia nodded. “I know.” She paused for a few moments, thinking. “We used to have a lot of fun together, you know? Planning tricks, working the crowd, celebrating after successful shows. And she taught me a lot. I guess it’s easier to remember all that now, now that she’s actually been caught and can’t make my life a living hell anymore.”

“I hate what she did to you. But I’m glad that, at least for a while, she was there for you. When I was being too much of a dick to remember to be a good friend.” 

“You’re a really good friend now, Q. That’s what counts. And you’ve never stolen from me, so that’s a bunch of points in your favor.”

“Ooooh, so now’s probably not a good time to tell you that I ran out of socks this morning and am totally wearing yours right now.”

Julia smiled. “That depends, which ones?” 

He took off a shoe to show her.

“No, not the cat ones! You monster.” They both laughed.

\---

With only six people left, the cottage felt incredibly empty. As Quentin cracked another egg into a bowl he was using for omelets, he remembered how just a few weeks ago, he was lucky if he could navigate well enough around the morning crowd to even get a bowl for cereal, much less actually cook something.

As Quentin poured the whisked eggs into the pan, he heard Julia’s phone crash down on the table. “Holy shit, Q, look at this.” Julia walked over to Quentin and handed him her phone, which was open to a news article.

***

**_Centurion Challenge Drama Continues: Second Cheating Scandal_ **

_As of this morning, new documents have surfaced revealing that Centurion Challenge competitor Eliot Waugh was caught plagiarizing his first year final project at Brakebills University, a highly elite school for magicians. It is unknown at this time why Waugh was permitted to continue attending the university, which claims to maintain a strict policy of expulsion for academic dishonesty._

_This is the second cheating scandal to have plagued the reality television show this week, after last night’s episode exposed contestants Marina Andrieski and Pete Lovelady for stealing the trick they performed last week from another duo on the show, Quentin Coldwater and Julia Wicker. Scandals like these in magic are uncommon, but not unheard of. In 2011…_

_***_

Quentin stopped reading. He went straight upstairs, forgetting to turn off the stove (Julia could handle it), and burst through Margo’s door without knocking. Margo was on one of the beds cuddled up with Eliot, stroking his hair.

“Eliot, you’ve seen this, right? It was Pete, wasn’t it.” He thrust out his phone, and although they probably couldn’t actually read it from so far away, from the looks of it they were both very aware of what he was talking about. Margo looked between the two of them.

“I’ll just give you two a moment,” and she quickly slipped out. 

“You can’t just let them get away with lying about you like this, it’s so not ok. Let me help you.” 

“Quentin, this is none of your business.” He was refusing to make eye contact.

“Ok, fine. Maybe it’s not, but… You’re going to do something about it, right? I… you don’t have to let me help, but… I know what it’s like to be their target, and... I don’t want that happening to you. Seriously, it’s not just the show that’s at stake for you here, something like this could kill your career.”

“I appreciate the concern,” he said evenly, eyes still fixed to the wall. “Now please, go.” 

Quentin stayed put. “Why do they have it out for you? It… they were already eliminated from the competition, I don’t…”

“Quentin!” Eliot snapped. At least he was looking at him now. “I said it’s none of your fucking business.”

Ouch. As angry as Eliot had been with him this past week, he’d never yelled at him before. Not like that. “Eliot please, I’m sorry for not believing you. I’m so fucking sorry. But they can’t just… they can’t just lie about people and get away with it, I need you to know I’m -”

“It’s not a fucking lie, Quentin! I did it. I plagiarized my project, Dean Fogg let me stay for some godforsaken reason, and here we are. I’m not going to do anything about it because I fucking deserve it.” 

“ _Eliot._ But why - ”

“Can we please be done talking about this? I get it, ok? My degree is a fucking lie, I’m no better than Marina and Pete. I know all of that. Now please just go.” 

“No, that’s not what - I mean, why do Marina and Pete care? Did you… El…” Pete had threatened Eliot right after the footage was revealed. “Did you do something? The footage…”

Eliot sighed. “She doesn’t advertise it, but Margo’s a genius with technology. She did computer science in undergrad. We’d tried getting the footage of them switching out your deck that one performance, but they’d somehow managed to erase it. Completely covered their tracks.”

What the fuck.

“Anyway, Margo did some kind of computer magic and got a direct stream going of all the security footage in the building. She was saving it all to a server. Marina and Pete caught wind that we were messing around with security shit, and threatened me to back off.”

Quentin felt like such an asshole. Eliot had been helping him this whole time? He had a million questions, and he had no idea what to ask first. “ _Eliot_ , I… Why just you? Did they do something to Margo, too?”

“They don’t really know how involved she was. I was… the face of the operation.” Eliot smirked, and Quentin could tell there was some kind of story there. “Anyway, we already had the stream set up. When they stole your trick, it just took a while to find the right footage.”

“ _El.”_

Eliot looked away again and crossed his arms. “I didn’t just do it for you, you know. Who knows what those two could have done if they were willing to sabotage someone like that? And, I mean, you getting eliminated wouldn’t be good for me. Competition-wise. So.”

 _“Eliot_.”

Eliot stood up and turned so Quentin couldn’t see his face. “And, yeah, maybe I didn’t want them to get away with stealing your trick. Because it was a really good trick. And, I mean, you didn’t deserve to get sent home, because… you’ve worked really hard to get here. And… and I don’t like it when you’re sad, and, um…” Eliot trailed off, his voice shaking.

“ _Eliot.”_ Quentin couldn’t believe the complete and utter selflessness of this man. “Even after everything I said to you? And even with what Pete threatened you with… you still…” Eliot slowly turned toward him. “El, can I…” Quentin was about to cry. “Can I please kiss you?”

Eliot tucked in his bottom lip, and Quentin could see his throat trembling while tears threatened to spill over. He nodded silently, and Quentin leapt forward. He kissed and kissed and kissed Eliot, tasting salty tears on his lips without knowing or caring whose they were.

“I’m so sorry El, I’m just. I’m so fucking sorry,” he said, leaning his forehead against Eliot’s.

Eliot sniffed and wiped at his nose with his sleeve. “I mean, I can understand. Why you thought I was involved. It just. It really fucking _hurt_ , Q.”

Quentin’s heart _ached_.

“I know, El. I know, God, I’m so sorry.” He buried his head in Eliot’s chest. Eliot was finally letting him touch him, and Quentin couldn’t bear letting go. “But why didn’t you just tell me what was going on? Jules and I know what Marina and Pete are like, we could have helped.”

“I didn’t… I mean, first of all it’s illegal, stealing security footage. No one else needed to be involved. And I didn’t… I was trying to figure something out, to avoid… I didn’t want anyone knowing about Brakebills. Especially you. Q, you have no idea how ashamed I am about it. How much I wish I could… And I know how you and Julia feel about cheating with everything Marina’s put you through. And I mean, cheating is one thing, but, plagiarizing a whole project? To steal something from someone else?” Eliot took a few shaky breaths, but he didn’t seem done. Quentin waited for him to continue, stroking his back. Needing to comfort him, and having no idea if he was making things better or worse.

“I was a mess my first year at Brakebills. I was already failing a class and my project was going nowhere. I was so scared of getting kicked out, and I couldn’t… magic is the only thing that’s ever made _sense_ to me. I couldn’t lose it. I panicked and… I know there’s no excuse…”

“Eliot, you don’t have to explain yourself to me, that was _years_ ago.”

“No, I. I _do_ though. It’s not… it’s not who I am anymore, I swear. Fogg did an excellent job of scaring me straight, he had me redo the entire thing over that summer with twice the number of requirements. But I… he shouldn’t have even let me keep being a student, I don’t even know why…”

“Eliot, look, I’m not saying that it doesn’t matter, but. Everyone’s done shitty things they’re not proud of, and… You’re torturing yourself about this, and you don’t deserve that. Dean Fogg gave you a second chance, you don’t need to be mad at yourself for taking it. What matters is what you do with it.” He leaned back to look Eliot in the eyes, rubbing his hands over his shoulders. “I still don’t… when I accused you of spying on me for them, you could have told me what you and Margo had been doing.”

“I mean, by that point you’d already yelled at me for betraying you and… I was mad, ok? But I couldn’t just let them get away with it. And… I’ve really wanted to stay mad at you. But… I just _can’t_ , Q.”

Quentin couldn’t take it, he kissed him again, deep and slow. “Eliot,” he panted, pulling away the minimum possible distance required to be able to talk. His heart was doing all kinds of somersaults _._ “I have, like… a _lot_ of feelings right now. Can we just… can we please…” And Eliot pulled Quentin with him as he fell back onto the bed, moving Q right onto his lap. He kissed him in earnest, one hand tugging hard at Quentin’s hair, the other reaching around to dip down into the back of Quentin’s pants. Quentin pawed at Eliot’s shirt, his arms, his back, his face, anything that he could reach, all while kissing him with everything he had.

“I’m so sorry. You’re such a fucking amazing person. God, El…“

“I’m really not.”

“You are.” Quentin looked Eliot directly in the eyes. “You are, and you are going to believe me. And then you are going to fuck me.”

A smile broke out onto Eliot’s face. It was the first time Quentin had seen him actually smile this whole awful week. “So bossy.”

“Mmmhmmm,” Quentin said, kissing Eliot again sweetly. He knew they still had a lot to talk about. But he _needed_ to be as close to Eliot as humanly possible right now. And they had time.

\---

Quentin had thought Eliot would want more space after everything, but he moved back into their assigned room immediately. They did a decent amount of talking over the next few days, about what had happened, and about trust and communication. But Eliot seemed a lot less mad than Quentin thought he probably had a right to be. They also talked more generally about their relationship, and Quentin was surprised by how serious Eliot seemed to be about him. They didn’t discuss specifics of what would happen after the show, but Quentin was actually letting himself be pretty optimistic. It really did seem like they’d be able to make it work, no matter what.

They also did a lot of not-talking. They’d only been apart for about a week, but to be fair, that was basically the same amount of time they’d been officially together. So really, it was totally reasonable for them to have missed each other enough to warrant multiple rounds of sex every night… and in the mornings… and the occasional quickie during rehearsal breaks.

The old Quentin might have suspected that Eliot was distracting him on purpose to win the competition. The new Quentin was more trusting, but also aware enough to recognize how distracted it was making Eliot as well. At this rate, Fen and Josh were going to obliterate them both.

Even so, he was reasonably confident in the trick he and Julia had planned. Fortunately, there was no theme restriction for the finale. They’d decided to base their new trick pretty heavily off of one they’d already created but had never performed anywhere publicly. It was going to be a fun show. 

\---

“Welcome to the Season Finale Performance Episode of the Centurion Challenge! Tonight, we have a special guest joining us to co-host! Please give a warm welcome to Henry Fogg!”

The audience applauded as Quentin’s old dean walked across the stage to join Jane at the front.

“Yes, hello. My name is Henry Fogg, dean at Brakebills University. There have been some amazing acts throughout this season, and it is my pleasure to be here to introduce the performances of these extremely talented magicians.” While he did sound genuine, his speech pattern seemed a bit stiffer than usual – he’d presumably been given a script to read from. 

“Now, before we begin, there’s something I need to set the record straight on. Some of you may be familiar with a certain news article targeting one of our contestants. It’s a shame that I even have to address this, but the press apparently loves any opportunity to raise up drama without checking their sources. These supposed ‘documents’ that have surfaced about Eliot Waugh’s project at my school are entirely fabricated.” He paused for a second, then clapped his hands together. “Ok, having gotten that out of the way, let’s get started with our first act of the night, Josh and Fen!”

Their trick combined Josh’s love of food and Fen’s love of sharp objects. They asked for a volunteer who was not on a diet and would be excited to get a snack. They blindfolded the very enthusiastic volunteer, and then laid out six cookies on a rotating tray. But inside one of them, they placed a razorblade, unbeknownst to the spectator. Then both Fen and Josh put a blindfold on each other. They took turns spinning the tray, completely losing track of where the razorblade cookie was located. Josh, still wearing a blindfold, would then select a cookie for the spectator to speed-eat, and one for himself.

The audience gasped and laughed throughout, and the spectator (unaware of the danger) kept jokingly saying things like, “I don’t like the sounds I’m hearing from everyone, but as long as I keep getting cookies, I’m happy.”

When there were only two cookies left, everyone took off their blindfolds. Without touching any of the cookies, they asked the spectator to freely select which he wanted to eat. He did so without any incident. Fen then carefully picked up the other cookie and pulled the razorblade out. The look on the spectator’s face was priceless.

“Next up, we have Eliot and Margo! Let’s see what they’ve been working on this week.”

 _“So, have you been pretty busy this week?”_ Jane asked.

 _“Uh, yeah, you could say that…”_ Eliot replied.

The clip then cut to a humiliating, 30-second long montage of Eliot and Quentin making out all across the cottage. On the couch with Quentin straddling Eliot’s lap, against the kitchen counter, against the door to their own room (opening the door would have required separating for a few seconds), against the banister of the stairs… Was this really appropriate to be showing on a supposedly family-friendly show? In one clip, Quentin was trapped against the refrigerator with a leg wrapped completely around Eliot’s waist. Sure, it was their fault for being so careless with what they did in public, but Quentin hadn’t expected _this._

It cut back to the interview. _“So you and Quentin aren’t fighting anymore?”_ Jane asked. The audience laughed.

 _“Yeah, we um. Worked it out.”_

_“Repeatedly,”_ Margo added. Eliot shot her a warning glare, but he was still smiling.

_“And what should the audience expect from you this week?”_

_“Let’s just say… this week we’ve decided to do something_ _touchy-feely,”_ Margo said.

“I think we’re all excited to know what that means. Please welcome Eliot and Margo!”

“One of the core principles of magic is altering your perception of reality,” Eliot said. “Often, this will be done with sight – changing what a card looks like, for example. But rarely does magic focus on one of our most important senses – touch.”

Margo continued. “We’d like a volunteer who doesn’t mind sticking their hand inside a mystery box. Nothing too gross, we promise.”

“Ehh…” Eliot said, his voice rising as if doubting Margo’s statement. The audience laughed, but they still got plenty of people raising their hands to volunteer. 

They selected one of them and brought her to stand next to a gray box roughly a foot and a half tall and a foot wide.

“Now, just go ahead and place your hand in the box,” Margo said. The woman did so, looking a bit cautious.

“Get ready, because you’re about to feel… absolutely nothing,” Eliot said. He slid off the front panel of the box to reveal that, indeed, the box was empty except for the spectator’s hand. “Now, can you see what’s inside the box from your angle?” The spectator turned to look and shook her head. The top was covered except for a small hand opening, and she would have to move to see through the front.

“Perfect. Just to check your sense of touch, we’re going to place an object in while everyone can see. What do you feel?” Margo placed a bottle of wine into the box.

“Um, it feels like a bottle?”

“Perfect! I’ll just set that aside for myself after the show,” Margo said. That got some laughs. “Ok, now take your hand out for just a minute,” she continued, sliding the front back into place. Eliot brought an object covered in a black sheet to the back of the box and placed it in.

“Now, some of you might remember that in our first trick on the show, we used subliminal messaging to make someone choose a word that we’d previously predicted. Well, we’re going to further prove the power of subliminal messaging tonight.”

An audio clip played of a woman speaking in an odd tone: _I like to CLEAN, when everything is CLEAN I enjoy it being CLEAN. CLEAN is what I want my house to be, CLEAN._

“Ok, you have been subtly influenced!” Margo said.

Eliot coughed loudly. “Yeah. Subtle.”

“Go ahead and reach in and tell us what you feel.”

“It feels like… a sponge.”

“Seriously?” Eliot said. “A sponge. A _cleaning_ implement? You’re sure?”

“Yeah, it’s a sponge!” she said confidently.

“Oh this is too easy,” Eliot said. “Behold!”

Margo lifted the front up to reveal a large rock. She dropped it onto the stage floor – it was definitely solid. The audience gasped. She even let the volunteer feel it.

“What the…”

“Ok, now we’re going to see if there’s a difference between your right brain and your left brain. Stand on this side and reach inside with your right hand, controlled by your left brain, the more logical side. What do you feel?”

“It feels like… a calculator?”

“Yuck,” Eliot said. Quentin smiled. Apparently that was what Eliot interpreted as a gross object.

“Ok, now go to the other side and reach in with your left hand – controlled by your right brain. What do you feel?”

“Oh. It’s… It feels like a teddy bear.”

“A teddy bear. Excellent. This is why we need both sides of our brain to work together - in actuality, it’s… a giant cactus!”

Holy shit. There was a huge cactus inside, taking up the entire box. Eliot put on some gloves and touched it, showing it was indeed real.

“Kids, let this be a warning: never give your stuffed animals a calculator.”

Wow. Quentin had never seen anything quite like that before. Having a spectator actually feel one object but having it turn out to be something different was a cool enough idea on its own. But the way it was executed… Quentin had no idea how they’d snuck that cactus in there. 

“Last, we have Quentin and Julia,” Dean Fogg announced. “We’ll see what they’ve prepared… after the break!” He gave a deep chuckle. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

When they came back, they started off with Quentin and Julia’s interview footage.

_“So, tell us what was going through your minds when you saw Marina and Pete performing the trick you’d prepared for that week.”_

_“At first we were just in shock. We knew Marina could play dirty, but we didn’t have any idea how they could have possibly known anything about that trick. We’d only rehearsed it in our private room,”_ Julia said.

_“So what did you do? You only had about 10 minutes before you had to perform.”_

_“Well,”_ Quentin said, _“that routine you saw, the bank heist. It was actually something Julia and I performed together as kids. We hadn’t been doing magic that long when we came up with it, but it was the only thing we could think of that matched the theme that we knew we could handle on such short notice.”_

_“So you last-minute remembered a routine you hadn’t practiced since you were kids, and it kept you in the competition?”_

_“I mean, just barely, but yeah. We were lucky,”_ Julia said.

_“How does it feel, knowing that they got caught?”_

_“I mean…”_ Julia started. _“It obviously feels good, that people know what happened. And that now everyone knows the level Marina and Pete are willing to stoop to. But I just wish it had never had to come to this.”_

“Ok, please give a big round of applause for Quentin and Julia!”

On the stage was a small round table covered in black cloth with nothing but a white mug and wooden box on top.

“Today, we’d like to try something a little bit different than what you’re used to seeing on this show,” Julia started.

Quentin continued. “Usually, the magicians come on stage, perform a trick, and leave you racking your brains for how in the world they did it. Well, we’re not going to do that.”

“Instead, we’re going to give you an insider’s view to what we, as magicians, love about magic. Sometimes, the way a trick is done is so simple, it can almost feel like a disappointment once you know. But other times, knowing how a trick is done can make it even better. We’d like to share one such trick with you tonight. To do that, we need a volunteer from the audience.” Julia picked someone and had them stand up.

“Now, we’re going to have you select a card,” Julia continued. “First, do you want a high card or a low card?”

“Um, low card,” they said.

“Ok, low card. So now pick a value, anywhere from two to ten,” she continued.

“I’ll go with nine.”

“Really?” Quentin said, sounding nervous. “You’re sure about that? You know what, I’ll just give you a moment to change your mind.” The audience laughed as he grabbed the mug of water off the table, took a long sip while looking at his watch, and then set it down again. “Ok, are you _sure_ you want to go with nine?”

The spectator smiled. “Well, after that, yup I’m definitely sure.”

Quentin dramatically glared at Julia. “You know, we really have to have a talk about how you pick volunteers.” The audience and the volunteer laughed.

“It’ll be fine, Quentin. Ok, nines. What suit would you like?”

“Let’s go with spades,” he said. 

“Interesting,” Julia said, heading over to the table. “It just so happens that in this box, we have a deck of cards.” She reached in and took out a deck. “Before the show, we went through and turned one card around.” She sorted through the cards, showing that all of them were in the correct direction, finally getting to one card that was reversed in the deck. She pulled it out, and indeed it was the nine of spades.

“We were actually extremely sure of what your choice would be,” Quentin said, taking the deck. “In fact, there are no other cards in this deck – they’re all blank.” He flipped the other cards around to show the audience. They started to applaud.

“Wait, there’s more! We didn’t just want to show you a trick, we wanted to show you what it feels like to be on our side,” Julia said. “When you’re watching a trick, you always have to think about how _everything_ the magician does, and _everything_ that’s on stage, is part of the act.”

“The first question to ask yourself is, why did we put the cards in a wooden box? Quite simply, we had to. We’ll show you with a see-through box.” Quentin went into his bag to pull out a plastic box. “When you open the top, it actually opens the bottom as well.” He demonstrated it a few times. “Now, there are also magnets on the box, and they actually lift a trap door on the table.” He walked over to the table, where they’d set up cameras overhead to project onto the screen for the audience to see. He put the plastic box in place and lifted the lid, opening a door on the table revealing some cards inside.

“As you can see, there are decks of cards inside the table that we could reach for,” Julia said. “We’ll get to that in a moment. The next question to ask yourself is, why did Quentin take a drink of water? It wasn’t because he was thirsty. The mug is an integral part of the trick. It, too, has magnets. Now watch what happens.”

Julia took away the part of the black cloth that was covering the very top of the table, showing a large circle of card decks inside. “There are 52 different decks, and if I rotate the mug on this specific part of the table –“

The audience gasped as Julia rotated the mug, the overhead screen showing the entire circle of cards rotating together with it.

“I think you see where we’re going with this,” Quentin said. “So now you all know the secret of that trick. Feel free to go try this on your friends! All you need is… 52 decks of cards and a magnetic table.” The audience laughed.

“Or… _do_ you know the secret?” Julia said before anyone could applaud. “As magicians, we love learning the secrets behind tricks. We wanted to share that feeling with you tonight. But you didn’t _choose_ to know how this was done. You didn’t choose to have the magic of wondering taken away from you.”

“If you remember,” Quentin continued, “we told you that for a magician, _everything_ on stage is a part of the trick.”

Quentin removed the remaining black cloth on the sides of the table to reveal its entire inside. Instead of packs of cards arranged in a circle, there was just a flat circle with pictures of the tops of packs of cards. The audience gasped again. Quentin removed the circle of paper, and in the process waved his hands around inside to show that there was nothing else within the table.

“And that’s why in magic we often like to say: nothing is as it seems,” Quentin finished, tearing up the paper circle with a flourish. The audience went wild. Even if they didn’t win, Quentin hoped that seeing this trick might at least inspire some people watching to learn more about magic.

“Thank you, Quentin and Julia!” Jane said. “That was our last act of the night. Thanks for tuning in! Remember, your votes are all that matters for deciding our winner!”

“Yes, so make sure you vote for your favorites! Good night America!” Dean Fogg added. When the lights went down, Fogg started heading toward the stage exit.

“Wait, Dean Fogg!” Eliot jogged over to him. Quentin followed a fair distance behind, wanting to wait for Eliot to go to the bus. “Umm… thank you. For, you know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Waugh. Our student records are completely sealed. Anyone claiming to have access to any such documents, therefore, must be lying.” He patted Eliot on the back. “Congratulations on making it this far. And good luck.” He nodded to acknowledge Quentin. “To both of you.” 

\---

The next morning, instead of a competition or field trip, they had an elaborate series of interviews and photoshoots. They did the usual combinations of interviewing each duo together, but they also did other combinations of contestants. Unsurprisingly, one of those was with Quentin and Eliot. 

“So what’s going to happen with you two after the competition?”

Quentin hesitated. Eliot had seemed so sure of their relationship when they’d talked this past week, but for some reason Quentin was still nervous about what he should say. Eliot decided for him.

“Oh, we’re staying together. Definitely.” He squeezed Quentin’s hand, and Q blushed. “We’ll just have to travel to see each other is all, which isn’t that uncommon anyway, with our career choice.”

“And there won’t be any hard feelings, if one of you wins and the other loses?”

“Oh, definitely not,” Quentin said. “At this point it’s just up to the audience, and I think anyone deserves to win just as much as anybody else. I’m really happy with who made it to the final three.” He looked up at Eliot and smiled. No matter what, they were going to be ok.

\---

“Welcome to the final episode of the Centurion Challenge. Tonight we have several special guest performances, and we’ll be looking back on the journey our contestants have taken together these past two months. And, of course, we’ll be revealing the winners you voted for!”

Quentin let himself sit back and enjoy the show. He was feeling unusually calm. At this point, they’d done all they could, and they’d at least made it to the finale. He could be proud of what they’d accomplished, whether or not they won. He actually got a little teary-eyed watching the montage they’d put together of everyone’s best moments throughout the season.

Finally, it was time to announce the winners. Jane brought all six of them up to the center of the stage.

“It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. We’ve seen some amazing magic this season, but only one pair got the highest number of votes. The winners of the Centurion Challenge are…” Jane slowly opened the envelope, then took multiple seconds to build up more suspense. “Quentin and Julia!”

Holy shit. The stage erupted with confetti cannon blasts, and the lights waving around everywhere were absolutely blinding. Quentin looked at Julia, who had the biggest smile on her face. They hugged tightly, and he actually lifted her up and spun her around in his excitement.

Fen and Josh came over first to congratulate them, giving them both friendly hugs. Then Eliot and Margo came over.

“Good job, you two,” Margo said, giving each of them a hug. He expected something playfully snarky, but she was being completely genuine.

“We literally couldn’t have done it without you guys,” Quentin said. “By all rights this should be you, I mean, who knows what that news article did to your vote amounts, and if they knew what you –“

“Q,” Eliot interrupted. “You won, and you absolutely deserve it. Please let yourself enjoy it.” He gave Julia a hug, and then gave Quentin a long kiss right there on stage for everyone to see. It might have been his imagination, but Quentin could have sworn the audience’s cheers got louder.

When they finally pulled away from each other, he saw Jane walking over to give them each a trophy. It featured two golden playing cards standing on their corners, slightly overlapping. Upon closer inspection, Quentin could see that they were the Queen and King of Spades, and they’d modified the faces to look like Julia and Quentin. It was a little weird to have a trophy with his face on it, but he did appreciate the attention to detail.

“Congratulations Quentin and Julia, you have won 2-months of headlining your very own show in Las Vegas, with a provided theater and dedicated crew.” Jane turned toward the crowd. “Thank you for being such a lovely audience – we couldn’t have done it without your votes. Tune in next season for the next Centurion Challenge!”

After the exit music died down, Margo came up to them. “So do you guys have plans for your Vegas show? If you need any artistic direction, I would be more than happy to offer up my expertise.”

Quentin and Julia laughed. “Well, we could definitely use some special guests for openers, if you wouldn’t mind…” Julia said.

“Sounds perfect,” Eliot said, smiling softly.

“You guys too!” Julia said, calling out to Fen and Josh who were also on their way over to them. “We’d love to have you guys on the show.”

“Oh, hell yes!” Josh said. “Vegas, baby!” Fen rolled her eyes. “Seriously though, we all have to hang out.”

“Oh definitely,” Julia said. “We’ll all keep in contact.”

Quentin turned to Eliot and Margo. “We have the Welter’s Exhibition in just a few weeks, from that box routine prize. So um, we’ll see you there at least.”

“Oh Q, if you think I’m going to wait until then to see you, you truly are an idiot.” Eliot pulled him up against his chest and kissed the top of his head.

“And me, Margo, and Fen have the Shoshana show in a couple months, so we’ll definitely see each other there,” Julia said. 

“And, they haven’t kicked us out of the cottage yet,” Josh added. “We get one more night – let’s not waste it! Let’s get back there and drink as much of the free alcohol as we can!”

Everyone started making their way to the bus, but Quentin hung back for a moment. He looked at everything that had defined these past two months for him - the empty seats in the audience, the confetti-coated stage that had brought him so much anxiety, the vacant judge’s panel. Then he looked toward everyone heading off-stage toward the bus. Eliot had one hand on Julia’s shoulder, telling some kind of animated story. Josh and Margo seemed to be having another one of their silly squabbles, Margo’s hands on her hips and Josh’s arms up in feigned retreat. And Fen was skipping ahead of everyone, occasionally looking back and giggling.

“Quentin, you coming?” Eliot called, turning around.

“Come on, join the party,” Margo shouted over her shoulder.

Quentin looked around one last time and smiled. “Yeah, be right there!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Josh and Fen's cookie and razorblade trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbdEAJG_c6k  
> Eliot and Margo's box trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO2HGRJCWRw  
> Quentin and Julia's card trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0CC99hVK8


End file.
